Today, I ranked the top 54 chess tactics, including forks, skewers, double attacks, pins, and much more with various puzzles, explanation, and examples. Thank you for watching, like and subscribe for more, and I’ll see you next time!
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0:00 54-51 – F Tier
2:26 50-41 – C Tier
9:18 40-31 – B Tier
16:55 30-21 – A Tier
23:40 20-11 – S Tier
29:45 10-1 – S+ Tier
I just want to say that I have used Alekhine’s gun to great success before (in one game… against a bot…)
Stalemate and perpetual check are obviously not bad enough that they intrinsically belong in C tier, FIDE just demands them to be scored unfairly.
This is gold.
12:49 you forgot to edit 😬
interesting example of the desperado: There is a line in the mengarini variation (e4, c5, a3, Nc6, b4, cxb4, axb4, Nxb4, d4, d5, c3, Nc6, exd5, Qxd5, Na3, Nf6, Nb5, Qd1) where you can play d5 and even though it seems like a free pawn if Nxd5 occurs then you can do a desperado with Qxd5 since after Qxd5, you have Nc7+ winning back the queen and being up a piece.
1:28 After black moves I prefer go to the checkmate Qf8.
Wait! I have to argue with your explanation of a Zugzwang. I believe that a position is only considered zugzwang when the position only losing because one player has to move, hence "compulsion to move". In your example, black is being checkmated whether they move or not. However, in zugzwang black would be drawn or winning if they could "pass" their turn. This occurs often in king+pawn endgames
Wow, this video is brilliant. It helped me remember how to- where are my keys? son.? son is that you? i havent seen you in years… what? yesterday? but- oh.. R.I.P.
54 tactics in less than 40 minutes ‼️ AAAAAAAAAWESOME
2:20 centralizing Your King is a essential tactic itself. You must operate with a King, too!
did he just use the decoy when he first explained the decoy as decoy?💀
Chose like the worst example of zugzwang… no one says that when you are obviously losing… zukzwang is more commonly referred to when when you have an equal position but any move you make ends up being worst… it’s not supposed to be obvious at first glance. This video is so dumb and unnecessary… I could’ve made the same shi and it would last 5 minutes going by most of your what you said “it’s NoT ThAt CoMMoN”, “tHat wHY RaNK sO low”
broski forgot en passant 😔
15:18 cant black just block by putting the rook on F6?
Comment
Others: the best tactic is fork or pin or skewer etc.
Hikaru: the best tactic is take take take.
Thank you !!!!
I like how you left in the restarts. It feels more like I'm listening to a person, not an "influencer".
Im sorry but saying that a tactic that wins is better than one that doesn't isn't very useful information 😅
we need a every single opening tier list and i know, we have the gambit tier list but just imagine a really long video with every opening and you could reuse the clips for the gambits and just change the number
5:04 was mate in 2: Rg5+ Rf6 Bxf6#
the deflection tacic is ofter refered to as "the ICBM" because of a meme in an opening trap where its played
the greek gift is one of my personal favourites because its rare but when you manage to do it its basically a free win
7:42 Attraction leads to another tactic, such as a fork, and deflection leads directly to a capture with no other tactic.
I get rook forks just about every Endgame I play. I Disagree with you saying they are rare, Perhaps on Master lvl or 2000+Lvl but when I play against 800 and 900 rated opponents they don’t have really good Endgame skills so I get a lot of Rook Forks, even against 1000 Rated, To be fair I’ve only played against a few 1100s and Probably out of 6 I’ve only gotten 2 Rook forks that I can think of.
#35: Volclus got overloaded! 🙂
1:26 Boss, don’t take the rook, Qc8 or Qf8 is mate 😂
16:44 this is not an example of decoy
That is an example of overloading the king
Decoy is attracting the piece to the undesired square
I am tactical player btw so i know drcoy tactics
bro amazing content i don't know where else one will find all the tactics so well explained and above all shared for free well done!!
22:14 this sacrifice on the caro kann is my favourite! do you know what game is this from? i was looking all over but couldn't find it . Anyways, great video, watched it all without skipping a single second
Very nice video but little correction: #28 isnt a desperado, its an in between move, a desperado is if for example your king is stalemated and you give rook checks until he is forced to take you (which would suite #50 the stalemate).
I found a cross check that won me the queen once. Parry and riposte
Scholar's Mate is the lowest tier. It's not like the others low on the list where it could come up but only rarely. This one can only happen if you voluntarily play a bad opening and hope that they don't know it, and then you basically give up the advantage for white if they do. It's just for fun, and it should literally never work against a NM or better, and rarely if ever above 1200. You can still win if you play 100 Elo better, but you could do that easier with a good opening.
The worst tactic is probably the 2 bishops battery because it has very likely never happened in a serious game
This guy needs 100k subs
What does one do if in the Greek Gift, the enemy goes Kg6?
erection
At 1100, I still fall for pawn fork & back rank mate. It's because I don't want to lose the tempo, & hoping the opponent doesn't notice it. I often get tunnel vision if my piece is attack, because after I moved it, I noticed a better move that would have get me a free piece. Lost many games because of this. #3 is not really a pin for me, free Queen development. Plus I favor bishop over knight, so always looking to trade my knights for their bishops.
I'm assuming you're ranking these by usefulness and practicality, and that's what I'll use to criticize your rankings:
1:54 I don't know why you placed King Fork so low, you said it can only happen in the endgame, but in any endgame position with at least 2 pieces that ideally don't involve a queen or 2 rooks, you have to watch out for king forks. It's still not that great, it feels like a A-tier tactic, but it shouldn't be ranked this low.
2:26 I don't know what you're saying about higher levels. Sure it doesn't happen every game, but in intermediate and higher levels, trapped pieces happen more because players are better at coordinating their pieces and constricting the opponent's pieces. I've seen it happen multiple times in ChessVibes's speedrun, and at that level it usually costs them the game. This should be in S-tier.
5:12 I'm okay with your ranking here, but the problem is not that it's obvious to see, it's that it's quite rare. The "obvious to see" problem doesn't matter because it can always be hidden behind other tactics.
6:35 How is this not in C-tier? This is a trap, not a tactic. Maybe you can argue that in some opening lines like one I know in the Scotch Game, you take advantage of scholar's mate as a way to win a piece back. But most of the time it's used as a trap and it isn't a sound tactic.
7:44 I feel like decoy/deflection is simply underrated in general. It is the start of having the mindset of, "this doesn't quite work" -> "is there anything I can do to make it work?", which is a powerful mindset in chess, because every once in a while, you can make it work, and that's the game.
15:22 I'm sorry, did you say queen forks happen especially rarely in openings? There are lots of opening traps that involve queen forks, and those are usually the ones I don't see (the fact that you literally have an example at 30:00 as well lmao). Still agree with the ranking tho.
15:36 That's not a decoy. First, it's more of a deflection. Second, I wouldn't even say that it's a deflection. It's really two threats that the king can't both stop. A decoy is tactically placing an enemy piece in an exact square/line that allows for another tactic. It can happen a decent amount in middlegames, but I say deflection is more common in general. Personally, I would rank this lower than deflection, but not by much.
17:42 Passed pawns are literally one of the most powerful endgame concepts. And if you're up just a minor piece or an exchange, you can only really win by making a passed pawn and getting a promotion. I have a feeling you're actually talking about something different in the video, but from the way I see it, it should be in S+-tier for sure.
18:33 It feels very weird to call this a desperado. That's more of an intermezzo tactic (another word for zwichenzug), since the move creates an additional higher threat.
19:54 This is a nice tactic to have in your toolbelt, since it works best with other tactics. I just got to add that the tactic that it works with is an example of a decoy, or attraction.
22:55 Even if the rook line-up is obvious to see, imagine if the rook can be taken by one of the pieces, like hypothetically the black knight was on f2. Well, first of all, you could just take the rook lol, but you might think, I'll just wait until they move the bishop first before taking the rook, but NO, not if you play a double-check. In this hypothetical scenario, both pieces can be under attack and it doesn't matter. The king still has to move.
25:30 This one feels overrated. I simply think it's a bit rare for it to be listed this high up. Usually, you're able to make passed pawns without sacrificing pawns but maybe it me subconsciously thinking passed pawns = good.
The rest is just questionable in the sense that is it really a tactic, or is it just a broader version of the previous tactics. The mate-in-1 example you used isn't strictly necessary to play on that turn. But the fact is that if you're playing checkmate, you're playing a mate-in-1.
Still a great video. However, I do see a lack of knowledge of chess concepts. For example, just because a tactic can be avoided easily doesn't mean it's not useful, you can use it to know exactly why your opponent can't stop some of your plans or ideas. And you also mention that some tactics are easy to spot. That almost never matters, because it can always be made harder to see when it's a few moves away.
And the sacrifice tactic?
hey Volclus Do You Have A Discord I would Like To Dm You A Puzzle Out Of A Game I Played
Dope Video! Very informative. Hit the Alekhine's gun on the same file as an opponent's king a few days ago in a blitz game. He was shook and blundered a check mate. F
On #52 why you take the rook? You can checkmate him on f8
4:40 The windmill examples misses a checkmate by moving the rook back
15:57 u forgot to cut the mistake here
I feel like ranking tactics does not make sense. No tactic is worse than another. It always depends on the position. But okay, if we are playing that game, passed pawns are such an important concept that has decided the fate of many many thousands of games. Putting them so low is ridiculous.
He combined some of them bishop pin and pin also knight fork and fork
#49 is actually called the mad rook tactic, where you check forever
Bro this is the worst tier list I’ve ever seen 😭😭😭
what abvaut skewer