Tactical Ideas: Updated List

Seven years ago, I posted "Tactical Motifs: A List," which contains several lists of varied length from text and internet sources. It had been my intent to develop a "glossary of tactics" to be published along with exercises that I had been using for several years with my students. Over the past three months, I have been poking away at creating this glossary, which also includes a small set of checkmate patterns, as part of a new self-published book. The impetus to finish it was my desire for a workbook that I could give the students in my chess camp next month.

For the book, Checkmate and Tactics (2019), I found an example of every tactic listed. For the checkmate patterns, I mostly used smaller partial diagrams, but a few are illustrated from games.

An example:

Trapped piece:
A piece that is vulnerable to capture because it has no way to retreat out of danger is trapped. Aggressive play grabbing material often leads to getting one’s own piece trapped, as in Spassky,B.–Fischer,R., Reykjavik 1972, the first game of their World Championship Match.

White to move

Fischer had grabbed a pawn with 29…Bxh2. Spassky’s 30.g3 trapped the bishop. Black gained two pawns for the bishop, but it was not enough. Black went on to win the game.

The list in Checkmates and Tactics, sans the checkmate patterns.

Battery
Breakthrough
Clearance
Decoy
Deflection
Desperado
Destroying the pawn shield
Discovery
Double attack
Double check
Fork
Greek gift
Interference
Intermezzo (Zwischenzug)
Key Squares
Lucena position
Opposition
Outflanking
Pin
Philidor Position
Removing the guard
Simplification
Skewer
Square of the pawn
Stalemate
Tableau
Tempo
Trapped piece
Undefended/Underdefended piece
Understanding threats
Windmill
X-ray
Zugzwang