A fork is a single piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at once. Your opponent can usually save only one of them, so a fork wins material almost by definition. Every puzzle on this page contains a fork, comes from a real game and is matched to your puzzle rating.
Any piece can fork. The knight is the famous one, because it jumps, it attacks in a pattern that is easy to overlook, and the pieces it hits usually cannot hit it back. Pawn forks are cheap and brutal, since whatever is attacked is worth more than the pawn. The queen can fork along ranks, files and diagonals at once, and in endgames even the king can fork loose pieces.
The strongest fork includes a check. The check must be answered first, so the second target falls next move. A knight fork of king and queen is often called a royal fork; add a rook and it becomes a family fork.
Start with the targets, not with your pieces. Look for enemy pieces that are undefended, the king, and the queen. Any two of those that one of your pieces could hit from a single square are a possible fork.
For knights there is a quick filter. A knight always moves to a square of the other colour, so from any square it only attacks squares of one colour. Two pieces on different coloured squares can never be forked by a knight. Two pieces on the same colour, a knight's jump apart from a common square, are worth a second look.
For queens and bishops, look along lines: two loose pieces on different diagonals or files that cross on one square. For pawns, look for two enemy pieces on the same rank with exactly one square between them. A pawn that can safely step onto the square just in front of that gap, on your side, attacks both.
In puzzles the fork is often not on the board yet. The first move forces a piece onto a forkable square, usually with a check or a capture that must be recaptured. Or it removes the defender of the square your knight needs, or trades off the piece that would have covered it. When you find a fork that almost works, ask what is stopping it and whether a forcing move can change that.
The first is forking two pieces when one of them can move away with a check or a capture of its own, so you never get to take the second. The second is landing on a square where your forking piece is simply captured. The third is forking a defended piece: winning a defended bishop for your knight is only a trade. Before you fork, ask what each target can do when it moves.
Solve fork puzzles until the targets jump out before the move does. When you are stuck, the first hint shows which piece to move, which is often enough to find the fork yourself. After you solve a puzzle, the full line appears beside the board, so check what happened to the second target.
Forks often combine with other motifs, so once you are comfortable here, move on to pins and discovered attacks. For speed, use Puzzle Storm.
Pattern Drill checks your own games for forks you missed and forks you found. Elo Maxing rates you on every tactical motif and serves the weakest next. For mixed tactics at your rating, use Puzzle Training, and to drill a fixed set until the patterns are automatic, try the Woodpecker Method. For a wider look at where your games go wrong, read how to find your chess weaknesses.
A move where one piece attacks two or more enemy pieces at the same time, so your opponent can only save one of them.
The knight, because its attacks are easy to overlook and the pieces it hits usually cannot hit it back. Pawns, queens and even kings can fork too.
A knight fork of the king and queen. When it also hits a rook, it is often called a family fork.
These puzzles train forks at your rating. Pattern Drill starts from your own games and trains the pattern they show you miss most.