Lesson #5: The Pin

We introduced the pin tactic today, whereby one piece pins, or claims to hold still another piece. We differentiated between an absolute pin, where the pinned piece absolutely cannot move (lest they violate the rules of chess) and a normal or sometimes called relative pin.

We saw from the second example game given in the notation lesson that sometimes pins can be ignored. The white player ignored the pin on his f3 knight to get a slick mate. That mate is so impressive that it's given its own name: Legal's trap or Legal's mate and has its own wikipedia page!

I hope you will both try a few pins in your games and also practice handling being pinned. Here is a worksheet with some practice problems: