Figure 2.5.3.6[White to move]

No Black pieces are poised to be forked. But again it is good practice to examine the consequences of threats you can make by advancing your pawns. White has just one such threat to consider: d4-d5. The Black knight would flee, but don’t stop with that observation; ask where it would go. It has only one safe square: c7. Re-evaluate the board as it then would look and notice that Black’s knights now would be a square apart on the same rank. (Alternatively, after pushing forward a pawn to threaten something, you can always ask what would happen if you simply pushed it again.) So d5-d6 then wins a knight, with the bishop on g3 providing necessary protection against Qxd6.

That is the idea, anyway. Against an alert player the outcome would be favorable but not quite so simple. As usual you need to consider whether he might seize the offensive. Here Black’s best reply to d4-d5 is not to move his knight to c7; it is to play Ne7xd5. Then when White plays e4xN, Black has the recapture Qxd5. White still gains a piece for two pawns, but Black has reduced his losses nicely. There is a valuable defensive lesson in this for occasions when you find yourself the target of an unavoidable fork. If you are destined to lose a piece, you might as well do whatever damage you can with it (or with another piece you can sacrifice in its place). A doomed piece that has this odd sudden liberty to go on a suicide mission is known not as a kamikaze but as a desperado.