jeftakels wrote:
This puzzle is purely for beginners and meant to teach tactics
Welcome everyone to this explanation of skewers. Skewers are a type of tactic to win material. The idea is that one can make use of the opponents king blocking a piece; exactly to win that piece. So remember, this tactic shows that it is actually very unhandy to block a piece with your king. An analogue can also be done with other pieces than kings; but such things can get more difficult.
Can you see in the following puzzle, what is the right tactic (and hence a skewer)?
So this is the idea, the king has to move out of check, and you can capture the piece behind it. Simple as that. Like I said, we can also do skewers on non-kings, although there is often no forcing there. With skewers on kings, one can have more confidence. Look at the following position. In what way can one still force a skewer? (So here we do have some confidence)
You can see that such positions are quite rare, skewers with kings happen way more often.
In the first diagram, how did the white pawn get to c1?
This puzzle is purely for beginners and meant to teach tactics
Welcome everyone to this explanation of skewers. Skewers are a type of tactic to win material. The idea is that one can make use of the opponents king blocking a piece; exactly to win that piece. So remember, this tactic shows that it is actually very unhandy to block a piece with your king. An analogue can also be done with other pieces than kings; but such things can get more difficult.
Can you see in the following puzzle, what is the right tactic (and hence a skewer)?
You can see that such positions are quite rare, skewers with kings happen way more often.