The Everything Chess Basics Book (27 page)

Black gets two rooks for his queen by exchanging with 1. ... Qxelt 2. Nxel Rxd2.

Make sure you get equivalent value when defending against a threat to capture. If a bishop is attacking your rook, defending the rook will not do. You lose your rook and gain a bishop. You have lost the Exchange.

Black loses the Exchange by defending with 1. ... Nc7 2. Bxe6 Nxe6. It’s better to move the rook with 1. ... Rd6 2. Rxd6 Nxd6, with an even trade.

Ignore

This is another device you cannot use when the threat is to your king. But anything else is fair. Of course, if your queen is being threatened with capture and you just go about your business as if nothing has happened, you will lose your queen. This is true whether or not you saw the capture coming. There’s not a whole lot of profit there.

What ignoring the threat can accomplish, however, is explained best by the old adage, “The best defense is a good attack.” Thus you can successfully ignore an attack to your queen by putting your opponent’s king in check. Or you can ignore an attack to your rook by attacking your opponent’s queen. Or by preparing to promote a pawn.

You get the idea. By threatening something more valuable, you can avoid bothering with the defense. Just make sure your attack really is worth more, in case your opponent ignores your attack in turn.

White ignores the threat to his g5-knight and plays 1. Qf3, threatening Black’s queen. After 1. ... Qxf3, he recaptures and saves the knight by playing 2. Nxf3.

Just remember that after the Zwischenzug the original threat may still be there. If it is, you will have to come up with another way to deal with it. Even, perhaps, another Zwischenzug.

Ignoring a threat temporarily in order to threaten something else of more value is known as a
Zwischenzug
. That’s a German word for “in-between move.”

White ignores the threat to his queen and plays 1. exf6 Nxd4 2. fxe7, which gets the queen back.

En Prise

En prise
is another French phrase. It means “in take” and refers to a situation where there is a piece or pawn threatened with capture at a time when there is no defender ready to recapture. Such a piece or pawn is also said to be hanging or dangling.

White’s rook is en prise.

The best advice for dealing with en prise pieces or pawns is to pay attention to them. If you don’t notice a hanging piece you probably won’t do anything about it. Yet there are usually several good ways to address the problem.

One very good way to keep out of en prise trouble is to make sure all your pieces and pawns are defended at all times. That may not always be possible, but by striving for such a situation you can drastically cut down on accidentally losing such a dangler.

A word of caution: If you are playing an experienced opponent and she leaves a piece en prise, don’t immediately snatch it up. There may be a purpose behind this seeming carelessness. Chess is filled with traps in which an innocent-looking capture actually loses the game through a counterattack. It’s up to you to find such traps in your games.

Should Black capture the en prise queen? No! After 1. ... Rxd2, White plays 2. Na6 checkmate.

Another thing to be aware of is that the en prise disease can affect your opponent as well as you. Always be aware of any unprotected piece or pawn, regardless of its color.

Convergence

This one amounts to the same thing as en prise, but it’s trickier to recognize. Convergence refers to a situation where there are two pieces (or pawns) threatening to capture a piece or pawn that has only one defender. By extension, there can be more than two attackers and more than one defender, but there are always more attackers than defenders in convergence.

The bishop and queen converge on f7, which is only defended by the king.

It’s Defended

The very fact that the object of the converging attack is defended is what throws off the inexperienced player. Yes, it is defended, but the defense is insufficient.

Being able to look at positions that have not happened yet and compare them to the position that is actually in front of you is an essential skill in chess. A good drill is to set up any position that contains a convergence and try to figure out all the captures in your head. Then play them out, and see how close you came to the positions that actually emerge.

In order to appreciate the power of convergence, you will have to learn to look ahead at least two moves. If the convergence contains three attackers and two defenders, you will need to look ahead at least three moves. But since those moves are all captures, and the captures all take place on the same square, you should be able to manage it.

White has three attackers on the c5-knight, while Black has only two defenders. The play goes 1. Bxc5 Nxc5 2. Rxc5 Bxc5 3. Qxc5.