Chess lessons › Good chess habits
Calculating five moves and more
Forcing moves keep a long line narrow: follow checks and captures, and see the final position before you play.
The idea
Checks and captures keep a long line narrow enough to follow.
- Rd1+ leaves two replies, and Qe1 only loses the queen.
- The bishop and the rook take turns to check the king.
- Five checks in a row end with Rh1 mate.
In a game: When every move is a check or a capture, follow the line to its end before you play.
How the lesson begins
Long lines are possible when the moves are forcing: checks, captures and threats. Each forcing move leaves your opponent few replies, so the tree of variations stays narrow, and you can follow it five moves deep and more.
This is Adolf Georg Olland against Jacques Mieses, Karlsbad 1907. Black to move. White’s king on h1 is short of squares, and Black’s rook and bishop are close to it.
A question
Black starts with the check Rd1+. Before you go further, count White’s replies.
Show the answer
Two: Kh2, or the block Qe1.
Right. And the block is no help: Rxe1+ takes the queen with check. So the line that matters is Kh2. A check that leaves one real reply lets you go deep.
In numbers
In the puzzle bank
6,020 puzzles in GreyChess’s bank practise it. Half of them are rated between 1,839 and 2,628.
The piece that makes the first move of the answer: rook 27%, queen 26%, pawn 19%, knight 11%, bishop 10%, king 8%, in puzzles from the Lichess puzzle database.