Fork Puzzles: Developing Level

By the numbers

fork puzzles at developing level: the numbers

There are 204,641 fork puzzles at developing level, solved 789,877,784 times in total. The median rating is 1392.

Often combined with

Middlegame tactics · 96,954Endgame tactics · 91,760Attraction · 26,896Sacrifice · 24,471Checkmate · 16,047Opening tactics · 15,927Exposed king · 13,260Mate in 2 · 10,015

Which openings produce them?

Sicilian Defence · 7,839Queen's Pawn Game · 3,083Caro–Kann Defence · 2,878French Defence · 2,871Italian Game · 2,377Queen's Gambit Declined · 2,126Scandinavian Defense · 1,904English Opening · 1,685

Counts computed from the full puzzle set.

How the solutions work · counted by a rules engine

What a typical fork solution looks like

Sample: 2,000 fork puzzles at developing level (1% of all 204,641).

52.6% need 2 solver moves, 42.3% need 3 solver moves, 4.6% need 4 solver moves, 0.6% need 5 or more solver moves. Median rating: 1372 for the shortest solutions, 1415 for the longest.

39.4% open with a queen move. The first move captures in 36% and gives check in 73.3%; 6.8% end in checkmate, 23.6% involve a sacrifice, 50.5% have White to move.

How many moves does the solver need?

Which piece plays the key move?

What does the solver win?

Material balance along the whole line, counting every capture by both sides (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9):

How much is left on the board?

How it is counted: every puzzle in the sample is replayed move by move with a chess rules engine. A sacrifice means a piece that is captured on the very next ply and was worth more than what it captured itself (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9). Sample of 2,000 puzzles. Percentages are shares of the sample.

Where it happens

Where the key move lands

Where the solver’s first move ends, drawn from their own side (rank 1 is their back rank). Busiest squares: f6 (6.1%), d5 (5.7%), e5 (5.3%), e7 (4.8%), e6 (4.4%).

Counted from the same 2,000-puzzle sample. Squares under 1% are left blank.