BEFORE I even start...I have to extend congratulations to the winners of the Jamaica Observer Chess Championship 2002. You all played great competitive chess and I'm sure you all will be a vital part of the future of Jamaican chess!

Now for our avid readers who I know will become champions soon.

I'm hoping that since the last time, you remembered everything we discussed... all the rules, etc. Today I want to get into the very reason why the game itself is so appealing to certain players. TACTICS! The soul of chess!

What on Earth is a Tactic?

Glad you asked that question. Imagine this. You're playing an amazing game and you see that your opponent will lose his queen if only you play this next move. With a smile on your face you graciously pick up your queen and place it on another square. You look up at your opponent to see his frown. But it seems that he doesn't have a frown, but a very large smile. You don't know many people who smile when they lose their queen, so you decide that something fishy is up. Now, he picks up his knight and places it on a square, which attacks your queen...and then calls out check because he attacks your king also! You move your king because you have to play by the rules and then watch your opponent's grin as he removes your queen from the game. What could cause this? That's right, good old tactics!

A tactic is defined as a move which takes advantage of short-term opportunities in the position. They can make your position better, or destroy your opponent's position to make yours look better.

Knowing tactics is a must when improving. But what's the best way to improve your chess game? To play of course, and also to play over the games of the best players. Play over 2000 games and you are a master. That's what I heard a couple years ago, and for whatever it's worth it worked for me. When you play over the games, you'll find several tactics.

That leads to something very important. A lot of you are probably saying, "So in order to play good chess I'll have to be rich and buy a camera to tape all those master games to play over?" Well, not exactly, in chess there's an easier way called Algebraic Notation. "OH NO" you say! Not algebra again! Need not worry, it's in no way difficult. It's just important... in order to play over a chess game or follow written instructions you'll have to know it. As a matter of fact, if you've ever played battleship, this notation will be a piece of cake. All you have to do is know which piece goes to which square. Simple enough right? Look at the diagram below:

The vertical rows (files) are assigned a letter from a - h and the horizontal rows are assigned a number from 1 - 8 as shown in the above diagram. Wherever a file and a rank intercepts, that is the name of the square. So the highlighted square would be c5, the white king would be on h1 and the black king on h8... get it?

Now you are probably wondering, "well, that's great, I can name squares, but how on earth does this help me with telling where the pieces go?" Well, that's just as easy, all we have to do is put the first letter in the name of the piece in front of where it moves to. So if I move a bishop to a4, (see diagram below) since bishop starts with B, I would write Ba4.

Note that a capital letter is used to denote the name of the piece. This avoids confusion, differentiating between the piece and the square it moves to.

If you were capturing a piece, you would use a "x" in between the piece and the square the opponent's piece is captured on. For example: In the next diagram the white rook will take the black knight on f4. This is therefore written Rxf4

Some special notes about notation.

* When you denote the move of a knight, use N since K is used for the king.

* Castling is annotated as 0-0 or 0-0-0

OK... believe it or not, that's all there is to (Algebraic) Notation! Now you know what all those crazy-looking letters and numbers in a chess book are for.

Now I can move on and show you the first tactical trick in chess.

It might take a little while to get the hang of it but you will. Here's a quick list of the ones we'll be going over each week:

* FORK

* PIN

* DOUBLE ATTACK

* DISCOVERY ATTACK

* SKEWER

* And the list goes on...

FORK

This tactic is pretty easy to understand, although they lurk all over the place and you must keep a watchful eye for them, both for ones to play on your opponent, and ones that might be played on you!

A fork, put simply, is an attack by one of a player's pieces on two of his opponent's pieces simultaneously on the same move. While if you attack one piece, it is easy to understand that the opponent can defend, but with a fork, you can defend one piece but it usually becomes quite difficult to defend both and thus one will be lost. Let's take a look at a fork below:

The white rook is coming from e1, now it's attacking both the black king and the black bishop. A FORK! The black king has to move, and then you will take off the bishop.

Pretty cool stuff eh? But don't think that rooks are the only pieces that can perform a fork. In fact, every one of the pieces in your army can perform a fork, including the little ol' pawn. Here is a final example showing another piece's forking abilities.

The white knight is going to move to c7, forking the black king and the black rook. When the king moves out of check then white will take off the black Rook. Black would just be devastated.

Whew! Not too much to grasp though right?

Chess is a game that's often been said is easy to learn but impossible to master. How True! Well learning these tactics and mastering them is the way to start... make sure you spot them in your games and what's worse don't let them catch you! Becoming a better chess player requires a lot of work but that's a good reason why this article is here ... to make your journey as painless as possible. You will learn a lot but try and remember as much as you possibly can. If you don't, don't worry - keep these pages and read it over when you need a refresher. Until next time...

Warren Elliott is technical manager of THE LIGUANEA CHESS CLUB. The national champion and an internationally recognised chess master. Contact him at www.chesswave.com, liguaneachess@hotmail.com or 970-4429/977/3821.

Feeding the multitude

DANGEROUS PETS

Pepper Pot