Poor, Vulnerable Rooks!! - Part 1

Take a look at the chess starting position. Which pieces are not defended by ANYTHING? Yep - the ROOKS!! The humble, versatile protectors of the king, the pieces that usually survive until the very endgame, not defended by anything in the beginning! And the enemy queens, knights and bishops LOVE taking advantage of this, and frequently manage to kill the poor things mercilessly at the start of the game.




Please note that in this blog post WHITE always carries out the attacks. REMEMBER THAT BLACK CAN ALSO DO THESE ATTACKS AS WELL!!


All names of attacks are made-up by me and may not be their real names!!

HERE COME THE KNIGHTS!!

The biggest rook-devourer is the eccentric knight. With all its notorious knight forks, enemy rooks commonly are murdered before they even move once!

The f7 queen-rook fork

This is one of the most common attacks on rooks by knights. A white knight LEAPS forward and snatches the black pawn on f7 and as it is defended by a bishop (usually on c4, as in the diagram on the right) the king can't take it! The queen has to flee, leaving the knight to LEAP forward once more and gobble up the black h8 rook. The diagram on the left is a typical f7 knight fork from the Two Knights Defence, where black blunders and allows the white knight to do its deed. Below is an animated sequence of moves that leads to the fork on the left. Click on the picture to view the animation:

Have YOU seen/played any chess games where an f7 queen-rook fork took place but from a different opening? It is particularly good if BLACK carried out the fork. Please comment and share the chess world with your knowledge! :) Help me add some more info onto the next part of this blog post. See the bottom of this blog post for more details. Thanks!


The king-rook check fork (mirrored f7 fork)

This is only a DEMONSTRATION -
not a real game position!

This knight fork is sort of the same as the f7 fork, but the other way around - the white knight now CHECKS the king and forks the a8 rook. The queen CAN, of course take the knight... ;) I do not remember a position in one of my games where a king-rook check fork occurred, so if you remember a position, I'd be really grateful if you could leave a comment. See the bottom of this blog post for more details. Thanks!

The dangers to queen-side castling

In the diagram on the left, black is about to castle. If he chooses to castle king-side, then FINE - go on! However, what about QUEEN-SIDE castling? It can't hurt, can it?!

Oh yes it can... (Click on the image below to view the animation)

A neat knight fork by white - I like it!

Of course, in a REAL game, black's pawns would NOT all be on their starting positions - this is just a demonstration. Remember to always watch out for pesky knight forks after you castle queen-side - it's happened to me!!

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So the next time you play a chess game, always watch out and CHECK IF YOUR ROOKS ARE UNDER THREAT!! ;) Part 2 of Poor, Vulnerable Rooks!! will focus on other pieces' ways of annihilating rooks.

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Do YOU have any experience of other ways that rooks can be mercilessly tortured? Torture by any piece will do - please leave a comment and share the chess world your knowledge! ;) Help me add some more info onto the next part of this blog post. Thanks!

• I would be really grateful if you could, in your comment, describe exactly the position of the chess board.
• Starting from left to right, write the contents of each square.
• Black is abbreviated "B", white is "W"
• E.g. for a white bishop, write "WBishop"
• If a square is blank, write "nil"
• Separate squares by commas. E.g. "WRook, WKnight"
• If a new rank starts, write "-". E.g. "nil - WPawn"
• If a lot of the same type of piece are consecutively placed, write the number of consecutively placed pieces there are, following by what type of piece they are. E.g. "8BPawns", "5nils"

For example, the f7 queen-rook fork position on the left could be described like this: "BRook, nil, BBishop, BQueen, BKing, BBishop, nil, BRook - 4BPawns, nil, WKnight, BPawn, nil - 2nils, BKnight, 2nils, BKnight, nil, BPawn - 4nils, BPawn, 3nils - 2nils, WBishop, nil, WPawn, 3nils - 8nils - 4WPawns, nil, 3WPawns - WRook, WKnight, BBishop, WQueen, WKing, 2nils, WRook."

Thank you for taking your time to share the chess world your knowledge! Thank you! :)