The Skewer

A skewer is similar to a pin. The main difference between these two tactics is that in skewer, the opponent’s more valuable piece is in front of his less valuable piece, while it is the opposite in a pin. A skewer is usually carried out by a chariot or a cannon.

There are two common patterns in skewer:
1. the cannon skewer

2. the chariot skewer

Let us take a look at some of the examples below.

In this example, we can see that the black general and the black chariot are on the same rank. When red moves its G8 cannon to J8, it becomes a skewer.

Black must move away his general, and this will expose the less valuable pieIce, which is the black chariot in this case. And red can capture the black chariot afterwards, results in a winning endgame for red.

In this example, the black general and the black horse are on line4. We can perform a skewer by moving the D2 chariot to D4

The black general to forced to escape to H5, then the red chariot can capture the blackhorse on J4.

We have learnt the basics of the skewer in this tutorial. Below is an exercise on skewer, let’s click on the button and see if you can complete the challenge!