Skewer Chess Puzzles

About skewer puzzles

A skewer is a linear tactic where a valuable piece is attacked and must move, exposing a less valuable piece behind it to capture — the reverse of a pin. Queens, rooks, and bishops create skewers by attacking along ranks, files, and diagonals. Skewer puzzles train you to spot these opportunities and to position your long-range pieces where they can threaten skewers. Common examples include attacking a queen or king that shields a rook, forcing the powerful piece to move and winning material. Practising skewer puzzles builds awareness of how pieces are aligned and trains the x-ray thinking that is essential for finding combinations involving multiple pieces on the same line.

How to train skewer

A skewer is a shape, not a sequence. Once you can spot the shape you will find the move in seconds instead of calculating from scratch, so train for recognition speed: glance, name the pattern, then verify.

Questions

How many skewer puzzles are there?

Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.

What level is this suitable for?

Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.