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Top 50 Chess Middlegame Tactics

These middlegame tactics occur frequently in real games and should be part of every player’s toolkit. Recognizing these ideas can help you win material or land a decisive attack.

• 1. Fork

• 2. Pin

• 3. Skewer

• 4. Discovered Attack

• 5. Discovered Check

• 6. Double Check

• 7. Decoy

• 8. Deflection

• 9. Overloading

• 10. Zwischenzug (Intermediate Move)

• 11. Clearance / Clearance Sacrifice

  See: Clearance Sacrifice

• 12. Interference

• 13. Sacrifice

• 14. X-ray Attack

• 15. Smothered Mate

• 16. Back Rank Mate

• 17. Battery

• 18. Distraction

• 19. King Hunt

• 20. Pawn Break

• 21. Trapping a Piece

• 22. Forced Sequence

• 23. Attack on a pinned piece

• 24. Line-opening sacrifice

• 25. Perpetual Check

• 26. Underpromotion

• 27. King Exposure

• 28. Rook Lift

• 29. Defensive resource / counter-threat

• 30. Open File Exploitation

• 31. Piece Trap

• 32. Dark/Light-Square Domination

• 33. Mate threat tactics

• 34. Defence Removal

  See: Removing the Defender

• 35. Exchange Sacrifice

• 36. Opening diagonals for bishops

• 37. Desperado

• 38. Quiet Move

• 39. Square domination

• 40. Mate in one threats

• 41. Multi-threat combinations

• 42. Breakthrough

• 43. King in the center punishment

• 44. Queen Sacrifice for forced mate

• 45. Skewer with promotion threat

• 46. Positional sacrifice with tactical justification

• 47. Diagonal forks

• 48. Zwischenzug awareness

  See: Zwischenzug

• 49. Undermining

• 50. Coordinated attack

For best results, combine these motifs with active piece placement and king safety awareness.