Forking is the most common tactic. Let's fork someone! Executing a fork and raising your hand in class and calling "Referee!" results in the exquisite magenta belt. Go for it! 

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A fork is simply when you move one piece and it attacks two different pieces at once! In order to earn any belt, including a magenta forking belt, you are required not just to do that tactic, but also to know you did it (your opponent cannot tell you) and you are also required to "gain material" from having done that tactic. That means you have to get something out of it. Forking two pieces that are both protected does not earn the wristband. If you were white, how could you win material in the situation below?

Does moving the pawn to the red square fork? Certainly not. That piece not only does not attack two pieces at once, it doesn't even attack one. The knight to the green and orange squares similarly attacks zero pieces, not two! The answer is knight to the yellow square! The black king is checked, and the black queen is attacked as well. The black king must move out of check, at which point you gleefully gobble up the black queen and win the game. But hang on, can you win the game as white once the queen is captured? Definitely! The white pawn simply needs to march down the board and then promote to queen and easily checkmate soon thereafter,

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Let's try another example. On the chessboard below, which move is the forking move that earns you a magenta belt? Green square, orange square, red square, or yellow square?

The answer is...all of them! The king forks the rook and knight on the red square. Black cannot save both! The knight forks the king and queen on the orange square. The pawn forks the king and queen on the green square, and the rook forks the king and queen on the yellow square. Cool puzzler, right? This is the kind we show in class every chess day.

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Remember, TKS students may only earn one Tactixband wristband color once per year, so one magenta per year please!

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So the below chessboard is your final forking challenge. The above puzzler demonstrated a pawn fork, a rook fork, a knight fork, and a king fork. Below, we illustrate that actually ALL the pieces can fork. Can you identify the one move--red, yellow, orange, or green--that does NOT fork?

The answer is...the green square! That move does check the king, but it does not fork two pieces. The orange move forks the king and the knight. The yellow square will fork the two knights. The red square will result in the white bishop forking the knight and the rook. In sum, every piece can fork, and this is a devastating tactic to gain material!