BRING YOUR VISION INTO ACTION
The chessboard is a dangerous place! Counting is the key to safely capturing your opponent’s pieces and defending your own.
Let’s see what happens when Black tries capturing on d4. Is he going to win material, lose material, or stay equal?
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When you have so many options to capture a piece, you must make sure you capture with the right piece. How should White recapture on d4?
Correct!
Black has captured a knight, and White captured a knight in return. Why did White take with the bishop and not the queen? If White took with the queen on d4, Black would now be able to capture the queen with his bishop on c5! You wouldn’t want that to happen.
Black captures a bishop with his bishop. Why not take with the queen? For just the same reason: if Black played Qxd4, White would capture with the knight on e2, winning a queen.
White captured the bishop, and material is still equal. He decided to take with the queen, offering a queen trade. He could have also chosen to take with the knight.
Your Move
(You play white)
Black has just captured White’s queen! But it’s a good thing White counted the defenders at the beginning!
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Finish the sequence of trades to keep things equal. Only one capture works.
Yep! The knight recaptures the queen. The huge battle over d4 is over. D4 was guarded enough times, and the pieces that each side captured were equally-valuable. So all that ended up happening was a giant trade of many pieces. The game is still balanced!
Your Move
(You play white)
A lot of white pieces are attacking d7, but a lot of black pieces are defending it. Should white start trading pieces on d7? Can White win a piece at the end?
Correct!
White had more attackers than Black had defenders, so it was right to go for it! White had 4 attackers: both rooks, the queen and bishop. Black only had 3 defenders, his two rooks and his queen.
So far, White has won a bishop and Black has won a rook, so at this moment Black is up material. But don’t forget, White has several more pieces attacking d7!
Now White is the one who is up a piece. He captured the bishop on d7, and then each side traded rooks.
White chooses to capture with the queen. On each of the previous moves, he could have taken with the bishop as well, and also ended up with an extra piece.
Your Move
(You play white)
If White had counted wrong, Black would now be up a piece. But he counted correctly, and there were more attackers on d7 than defenders.
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Finish what you started!
White is now up a bishop. He had more attackers on d7 than there were defenders, and White made the right decision to go for the massive series of captures.