A Common Chess Tactic You Might Be Overlooking - The Alekhine's Gun Chess Tactic

What's up guys today ?

We're talking about the Alek kinds gun tactic .

It's actually not really a tactic , more of a setup of your pieces .

But there are a lot of tactics that arise when you have your pieces in this position .

We're gonna start with some very basic examples like this one right here .

We're gonna work our way through to some more complicated ones like this one over here .

And regardless of what your rating is , I think you're gonna learn a lot today .

So first things first , when we say Alek , he's gun , we're talking about a battery that you create with your pieces .

Now , if you don't know batteries , when you line up your pieces , either on a rank of file or a diagonal .

In this case , we've lined up our pieces on the D file creating this battery , Alek kind's gun .

To my understanding usually means that both of the rooks are in the front of the queen .

Now , you could switch these , maybe the queens in the middle and occasionally the queen might be in the front .

But generally speaking , it's gonna be most effective this way .

And that's because you can , if you needed to trade or sometimes sacrifice these rooks , you'll be able to end up with the queen as the final piece , which is the most powerful .

And so that's why usually the queen going to the back is a good idea .

So , um once we have this , you can see how it creates a lot of pressure on your opponent's position .

In this case , black is really trying to defend that pawn .

We might play a move like knight to F five and we're probably gonna be able to win that pawn .

OK ?

So let's start with our first example here .

It's black to play .

What is black's best move in this position ?

All right .

If you had a chance to look at that , the move is simply rook to D six .

And this looks very similar to what I just showed you , you create the Ale Kines gun battery and you're attacking the night and look at this , we have actually four pieces attacking the night and it's only defended three times .

And so if white wants to save the night , they have to move it somewhere .

However , if they do , then again , we have three pieces lined up on this rook and only two defending it .

So you can see we can just simply take and we come out on top because we had the extra piece .

All right .

So that's just a good example of how it's very powerful when you line up those pieces onto a good target .

That's the key you want to make sure that you're lining them up onto a good file or in this case AAA piece that you're attacking , OK ?

You can't just put them anywhere and expect it to be effective .

For example , if this pawn was on B three and we line up our pieces over here attacking that pawn , then it's probably not gonna be that , you know , effective .

All right , let's go to the next example .

Black to play and win .

What should black play ?

All right , if you had a chance to look at that .

So the first thing you want to ask yourself is what is the , the battery or the Alkins gun attacking ?

Well , it's attacking the H two square , but if we count up 1 to 3 Attackers , white has 1 to 3 defenders .

And so it's simply just taking isn't gonna cut it in this position .

However , we have this nice little night move night to G three check , which is a fork .

And even though the rook can take us , we lure that rook away and once the rook is gone , now , if we recount white only has two pieces defending , we have three attacking and so we can simply take , take again and that's checkmate .

Ok .

So a good example of how you had to pair that Aines gun uh battery along with something else in the position .

In this case , it was 92 G three check which ultimately led to the checkmate .

All right , let's look at the next one .

It's black to play and win .

What is black's best move ?

All right , if you had a chance to look at that .

So again , we have the battery this time , it's switched around a little bit .

The queen's in the middle , right ?

Um But again , if we count 123 and 123 , it looks like white's defended .

So we have to do something different .

And in this case , the move is knight takes D three .

Again , it's a nice little fork and notice how if white captures us , then the rook is left undefended down there and we simply take it .

And now we , we basically won the rook for the night .

Ok .

So another example of how we had to pair something else going on in the position along with the threat from the Aines gun .

All right , let's go to the next one and they are gonna start to get more difficult .

It's white to play and win .

What is White's best move in this position ?

All right .

If you had a chance to look at that , when I first looked at this position , I was tempted to say the move queen to age seven .

But then the king goes to F eight and the king is escaping and we don't really have a follow up .

And so the move in this position is queen to H eight .

It's a queen sacrifice of course , the , the black uh king can't escape .

So he has to take it and then we simply take the check , we bring this rook down and it's a really beautiful checkmate with the two rooks because the king is just trapped in our pond is actually playing a vital role in this one .

So that's a good one to be aware of .

If you've never seen that before , you probably had a hard time thinking of that move .

But now that you've seen it , um you know , you'll , you'll spot this one in the future .

I , I think .

All right , let's go to the next one .

All right , it's white to play .

What is white's best move in this position ?

All right , if you had a chance to look at that .

So the first thing , uh we have this lined up here , but it's , you know , defended two times .

So that doesn't really help us .

We also have a threat here on G7 with our queen in a row , but it's also defended .

We don't want to take this and lose our queen .

That's defended .

It looks like everything is defended .

However , if we think about the Aleks gun and the fact that we might want to triple up our pieces , you might notice the move queen to D five check .

And as soon as you think about that , black has to waste a move moving to king somewhere and notice what we've done .

12 .

Now we have three pieces lined up on the rook .

It's only defended twice and we simply can go for this trade and we're gonna come out on top and now we're winning .

Ok .

So again , another example of there was this idea of the Ale Kines Gun , but you had to pair it with the fact that there was a check and that's ultimately what led to , to the winning position .

All right , let's go to the next one .

It's black to play .

What is Black's best move ?

All right .

If you had a chance to look at that , the move is rook to D one check .

And White's king has a problem , you can either move here or you can try to block with the rook .

Those are the only two options you have .

If you try to run here , we can simply bring the queen in and this is check mate .

And so most likely White would try to block with the rook , but then we can simply take and then the queen comes down and it's also checkmate .

Here's a good example of how I said , you know , having the queen either in the middle or in the back can be beneficial because once that first rook goes down and in this case gets traded off , we can follow up with the queen and it's checkmate .

Ok ?

So it's kind of important sometimes the order that the , the pieces are in .

If the rooks are in the front or if the queen's in the front or , you know , kind of depends on the position , but when you're setting up the Alek kinds gun yourself , you want to be thinking through those things .

What , what's most likely to happen ?

Am I most likely gonna trade one or two rooks ?

Would it be beneficial for my queen to be in the middle or at the end ?

Uh , and sometimes you , you know , you can't control that , Like just depending on what happens in the game , it just ends up a certain way , but just keep those things in mind .

All right , let's go to the next one .

Ok ?

It's white to play .

What should white play ?

All right .

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , you might have been tempted to say queen here , check , thinking that you're gonna win the rook .

Let's just say the king moves here and you take the rook .

The problem with that is your own king is not safe and black is gonna come over here and now you just lose .

Ok ?

You get check it .

So what you needed to see and this is actually very similar to a previous one that I showed you guys .

But after we take here with check takes , takes and look at this same kind of pattern that we saw before .

Check and checkmate .

There's not enough spaces for the king to hide and we can deliver the checkmate with the rooks and the pawn ok .

So that one was a little bit trickier .

It was kind of disguised , but hopefully you're getting you , you're starting to pick up on that pattern .

Uh where even you can , you can even sacrifice your queen .

All right , let's go to the next one .

I have three more for you .

They are gonna start to get more difficult white to play .

What should white play in this position ?

All right , if you had a chance to look at that .

So this one is interesting because it really looks like queens at age six would be a really strong move trying to go for check made here .

The problem is that black has the option then to just give up the queen for the two rooks .

Yes , you can take here with check .

But then the king moves and you're probably gonna have to just keep giving him checks .

Eventually black can take this if you stop giving them checks and it's gonna be hard to win .

Ok ?

So because of that , we needed to find something better and the better move is queen to F four .

And what we're doing here is creating a major threat on F 8123 .

Now we have four pieces threatening to go here .

And the only way that black could really stop , that would be a move like queen to C eight lining up there so that if we can go here , they can take and take and take and that works out fine for black .

However , now we can go queen to age six .

The queen is no longer threatening to take our rook .

And now black can't stop the checkmate .

And so because of that , uh Blackwood , I don't know what they would do , maybe take this with the rook .

But then we can use this to take advantage of the F eight square with rook to F eight if they take its checkmate , so they would probably move here and we simply take their rook .

Ok .

And so we're , we're winning a rook .

And it all started with a very simple kind of quiet move of just sliding the queen back creating that triple battery , which ultimately caused so many problems for black .

And so you can see how , how powerful this is .

Uh when you pair it with some other stuff going on in the position .

In this case , it was this past uh that ultimately was too much for black to handle .

All right , let's go to the next one .

It's black to play .

What move should black play ?

All right .

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , uh again , we have the same kind of idea , a very quiet move .

You can see there's some , some stuff happening here , but all we need to do is slide our queen back .

If white tanks , we simply recapture , we're not worried about that .

But what we've done now is create the triple threat here and we're threatening to just take this .

And if White takes , it's gonna be checkmate and White doesn't actually have a good way to defend this king to h one is , is a tribe .

But now we could simply take , of course they can't take us or it's checkmate if they take here , like I mentioned , we take here and White's just in big trouble .

Uh They , I think they have to give up the queen .

Otherwise we're just gonna take here and checkmate them .

Um Or I should point out if they move the rook away .

We have a nice finish here if you want to pause .

That's right .

We have the move rook to H two working in the take and then queen G is checkmate .

Ok ?

And again , you see how powerful it is when you have these , these , you know , rooks and queens are powerful pieces .

And so when you put all of them on the same file , it really creates some serious threats that your opponent has to watch out for .

Ok .

All right .

I have one more for you guys .

This is the most difficult one that we've looked at uh black to play .

What move should black play ?

All right .

Well , if you had a chance to look at that , so we have the triple battery , but white also has , you know , the two rooks kind of lined up as well .

There's a queen which might potentially come down here .

There's a night , there's , there's kind of a lot happening .

However , we have a nice move here and it's the move knight to C five .

And what we're doing is we're pairing this battery .

So creating a threat on the rook along with another major threat , which is attacking the queen , right ?

Like White doesn't want to just lose their queen .

And there's a couple of things that they could try .

Number one if they do go for this queen trade , like I mentioned , we simply take it and since we've got the battery , we are able to take White's truck .

So that doesn't work for White .

Now , the interesting line that you really needed to calculate is what happens if they just take our rook because then they create an attack on our queen too .

And you needed to see that we could take here with the fork .

They have to take our queen because we just took their queen and here's the key .

We take the rook with check , right ?

If we didn't have that check , this wouldn't work because white would be able to take us .

But because it's with check , uh White has the tough decision , do they move the king and allow us to take the rook ?

We're up a rook or do they take our night and then we take the rook , we're still up the exchange .

We have a rook for the night , which is good for us , right ?

So , uh that was a pretty you know , pretty difficult one , a little bit more complicated , but it's the same idea of pairing that , you know , powerful battery along with something else that's going on in the position .

And ultimately the tactics work out in our favor .

Ok .

So these are the kind of things you want to think about in your games when you have three pieces lined up and , and hey , if you're not lining up your pieces like this , maybe you need to start doing that , like pick an open file , right ?

And start lining up your pieces , triple batteries .

You can probably create a lot of tactics in , in your games if you start doing this .

Ok .

So I hope you guys learned something from this and um , let me know your thoughts down below on the Alan Kines Battery , but I will see you guys next time as always , stay sharp , play smart and take care .