Hi all. Let's continue our look at the secrets of chess tactics and today let's
look at pins so you can follow along and try these examples yourself on the
improve menu at www.chessworld.net. Just go to Puzzle books and if you want to go into
the tactics category ... middle game tactics ... weakness to exploit and we check out
that category we're going to be looking at the pin tactics today. So what is a
Pin? There's a nice definition on wiki. A pin
is a situation brought on by an attacking piece and which a
defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece
on the other side to capture by the attacking piece. So moving the attacking
piece to bring on the pin it's called pinning. So when you pin something you're
pinning the defending piece so restricted is described as pins.
It's the victim. Only pieces that can move an indefinite number of squares in
a horizontal vertical or diagonal line can pin. So you're only pinning with
your bishops rooks and Queens. Kings knights and pawns cannot pin. Any piece
can be pinned except the King because the King must be immediately removed
from check under all circumstances and the most important types of pin are
absolute pins and relative pins. So absolutely means against the opponent's king. Relative is
say against opponents queen. The risk with the relative pins is that they can
sometimes have the option to move out of that relative pin. So that's the theory of
it. Let's look at some practical examples now and I'll put it onto a big screen
mode. This first example from Aron Nimzovich who one of the leading hypermodernists
who categorized by the way in his classic book "My system" pins as a very
special case of not just the tactical concept but a strategic one as well. He
realized that they they could and be used in a sort of positional manner to
immobilize the opponents position. But here we have a super cool tactic. Five seconds to
pause the video. What would you play here?
Okay the rooks attacks you might think well we need to move the rock surely? No
There's a pinned g7 pawn. Think again.
I will give you a tiny bit of time to think again if you're moving the rook.
You can actually play queen g6 and there's an unstoppable threat here.
After Kg2 to get out of this check we go here in particular is a good
square. The unstoppable threat is Queen takes h6. What can black do about that? If
the bishop moves we can take and then mate there. Or just mate with Queen takes
g7 if the bishop moves. So it's a really super cool pin vividly demonstrating the
power of the pinned piece or pawn. Well it's illusionary and "pin and win"
basically. The expression "pin and win" definitely winning here so let's go on
to another example. Five seconds to pause video so Emanuel
Lasker one of the world chess champions. He creates a remarkable
pinning concept by first playing the check. So the Queen's pinned to the king
but that's not a big deal here. If we take the Queen then knight takes. So what
actually can we play here to really invoke another kind of pin and which is
winning the Queen. If I give you five seconds. Okay to make this a big deal we
introduce rook e8 check creating a pinned knight there so that's immobilized
and now we can just take the Queen. So that's a wonderful example of a pin. You
might be wondering on kf8 in this particular example then there's Bishop
h6 check so we can drive the King to g8 and then we could deliver Qe8 check
mate or on knight c6 there's another wonderful tactic Queen takes c6 and then
we have Rd8 checkmate like bishop and rook Paul Morphy Opera style
checkmate. Okay I hope you enjoyed that one.
Our third example. If I give you five seconds I'm hoping you'll see this one.
Relatively easy.
So identify the pinned piece of pawn. Assume it's power is illusionary and then you
can end up with queen takes f3. Yes, that pawn was pinned to the king
absolute pin - so a nice simple example there. And another one similarly what
is pinned in this position? Five seconds okay - the pawn on e7 is pinned so we can play
bang queen takes f6. This was an absolute pin not relative pin the pawn was pinned
to the King.
Qxe7 checkmate.
So here five seconds okay. That pawn is pinned we can play rook h5 check and now
invoke the power of the double check forcing the King to move. So check from
both Queen and rook and on King takes Rxg6 is mate.
There's no King takes the bishop on c2 means it is mate. It is protecting g6. This is actually
checkmate. There's double check and mate. So on to the next example.
This is a classic from a Bobby Fischer game. So how to exploit the pin if you haven't
seen this before I think you'll have to be a tactical genius to work this out if
you haven't seen this before. But you might want to pause the video five
seconds to pause the video. Okay the first move is actually causing interruption first.
e5 to kick the knight back to interrupt the Queen and rook. And it's
here we have basically a kind of relative pin against d7 against
the Queen and absolute pin against f7 against the king and both come to light
here with this next move. Brilliant move Bishop takes f7 so King takes
and now Ne6!! so exploiting that pin. And it's absolutely winning the
game. The game actually continued. Bobby Fischer and Samuel Reshevsky had rivalry. He played on and on.
He didn't he didn't want to lose in less than twenty moves but it's
absolutely lost from here. He lost his Queen and it carried on a bit but
it's winning the Queen. And there's nowhere for the Queen to run and if the
King takes here then that it just gets mated after the check the King gets mated
pretty soon so crushing use of pins there in this example. So here this was
bad preparation I believe from Vishy Anand following a stem game
disastrously with the black pieces and in fact white just played a simple
refutation Queen e2 because the knight is going to be pinned to the King
on d5. You know with d3. It's just a disaster and it ends
in disaster here so knight c6 check. Now the next example - how do we create a
vicious pin in this example I give you five seconds? Okay you actually just
capture on e6 and this creates that pinned pawn - a relative pin. And then
takes e4. Also by the way on F takes is still because that bishop was adding
protection to the Queen and now a protection is gone bang rook takes e4 is
possible. So a great use of a pin here as well now this check it would be
lethal if King h1 Nf2 is forking king and queen and king g2 there Queen F2
check and it gets nasty after the you know things like Qh2 but white
can actually save themselves. If I give you five seconds White uses a pin to
save the position with Knight b6. So on Queen takes there's now queen
d4 check so that that rook will be pinned to the Queen - relative pin. And on
queen takes yeah white is material up.
So a crushing move invoking the power of the pin in a
defensive manner. In this fascinating example it looks as though we've got two
pins - an absolute pin or h7 and a relative pin on f7. With that f7 pawn it looks
as though rook g6 is really tempting but black has a defensive resource there.
Not f takes because there's rook takes f8. And that's winning for
white but actually f5 - so that protects g7 so that makes things tricky. Can we
eliminate this defensive resource of f5. There's a move white can play first which
is absolutely crushing if I give you 5 seconds. So what would you play first?
Best move here? 5 seconds pause the video. Yeah okay we can
still exploit the pin on the f7 pawn move Re6 so cannot take
because of Rxf8 crashing through. Now this means the f5 defense is less effective
and we could play rook g6 here now. And so black tries to defend g7 like that
but that neglects f7 we can take here threatens Qxh7 checkmate. There's a check
here we can play here. Bureaucracy - a bit of bureaucracy ... forms to be filled
etc and g3 - another bit of bureaucracy. We don't have to
take that and in fact we can step back to h1 and that's absolutely winning. It's
gonna be absolutely winning. Checks we can just get out of it soon and we'll be
mating on h7. So a crushing example there. In this next example how do we use the
pin if I give you 5 seconds?
Okay we can actually pin that Queen to the king. Absolute pin and that's
absolutely winning. If the Queen took we have Queen e7 checkmate. On rook takes
rook takes we're pinning that Queen still so it's it's absolutely winning
here. So rook takes rook takes. If Bishop takes we have Queen takes d8 checkmate.
If Queen takes Queen e7 checkmate. Here is a crushing use of a pin
as a preliminary to a winning attack. If I give you five seconds okay dark square
weaknesses we can actually pin that bishop and totally take out the defender
with rook takes. And the key point here - can you guess?
Okay crushing blow. You can play Queen f6 threatening mate and because on G takes
there would be rook G4 for King moves Bishop takes is mate so that's
absolutely crushing. Here five seconds
okay we can take out the defense of h7 first. So queen h7 we got a
pinned pawn - against the f7 which we can now exploits with ? Okay we can exploit that
it seems in two ways. Knight takes e6 is one of the ways. So that's forking King
and queen. Rook takes threatens Queen h8 so that means Black really has to do something
radical and gives up the Queen. Well that's absolutely winning for White. Now here
there's a pinned rook. And there's also a pinned pawn. Both are absolute pins in
this position. Five seconds okay we can play the crushing move rook g5 wrenching
open the F file. Now what would you say rook f1 or queen h8? Okay I'm hoping you
will choose Queen h8 because rook f1 there's King g8. So Queen h8 we drag
the rook back and now we can play the check and with that "thorn" pawn in the
center this is checkmating. Queen takes mating.
Now here our Queen is attacked. What can we play which invokes winning pins? Five
seconds to pause the video. Okay. Bishop g7 double-check so our queen cannot be
taken because of that other check. Now we can take here and actually we can create
another pin. Queen pinned to the king and that pawn is pinned to the Queen. We can
exploit this with can you guess? Knight g3 so if that pawn takes we can take
the Queen there. And they'll here the back row is weak we can just play check
and this is mating. Cute stuff invoking pins there. A great example by Gata Kamsky
- former US Chess Champion. Here is a Queen's gambit declined trap
which is a well known trap. This is an example of a relative pin. What can we do here with
black. If I give you five seconds. This backfires on white totally. Knight takes
d5 so offering Queen. Because now we have this check. We're gonna get the Queen
back. We can either just take here leaving that pin in place or just
execute the pin immediately both are winning. Absolutely those moves are winning.
Here Alexander Morozevich had a pinned piece and fell victim
for Rd8 checkmating because Ne8 Qxe8 is checkmating. What
could he have done first in this position if I give you five seconds? Okay
sometimes it's very important to unpin. and Kg8 would have been winning.
Kg8 would have been absolutely winning with the big threat of rook takes h3.
Tragedy there. You know that rook takes h3 is winning. With Rh1 coming.
Black can make use of Kh7 if needed.
The queen on f3 is stopping all the exit roots of the king there so this
unpinning as a preliminary to attack is yes sometimes it's very very important
to do that type of prophylaxis before going on the attack.
Put yourself beyond defeat is an art war principle. To put yourself beyond
defeat before going on to the attack. Now here white to play and mate. Okay I hope you
can spot it. Yeah we can pin that Queen that's a desperate move in fact we
have a strong move mating here. Nothing beats really the mate in
one. Forget taking the Queen. That "thorn" pawn
holds g7 for the checkmate and our last example. I hope you can spot this?
Five seconds ... so what is pinned in this position? The pinned piece or pawn - the power
of it is illusionary according to Aron Nimzovich. Where is the illusion? Okay it's
f7 so the illusion is g6 so we can actually snap g6 off and then checkmate
here. So I hope you enjoyed these. Some of them simple examples some of them more
complex but you got the gist of it. Pin tactics - you can come and practice these
and other puzzles at www.chessworld.net from the improve menu ... puzzle books ... let's go to
the overview so there's a lot there's a new book by the way Magnus Carlsen puzzles
you might want to check out. 45 spanning his career there. 45 puzzles I've just curated
just yesterday as well. But for the tactics section I thought we could go
over pins today. I hope you got something from that. Check that out yourself and
also the playlist "secrets of chess tactics" which this video is part of to
revise the other tactical instruments for winning chess. Thanks very much.