Board vision · unit 2

Attack maps

Every square a piece hits, seen at once rather than traced one line at a time.

Not started

clean = right, and inside the cap

What this unit is for

Counting attackers, in unit 3, assumes you can already see what a piece attacks. If that step is a trace rather than a glance, counting becomes tracing several times over and the clock beats you.

This is also where the blocker rule gets built, and the blocker rule is the one that decides most miscounts later.

Not in this unit

Not whether the capture is any good.
Not legality — a pinned piece still attacks.
Not counting attackers, which is unit 3.

Block 1Read · ~8 min

The rules

Rule 1A piece attacks the squares it could capture on, whatever is standing there and whether or not the move would be legal. The pawn is the exception worth stating: it moves straight ahead and captures diagonally, so it attacks only its one or two diagonal squares.
Rule 2A queen, rook or bishop runs along its line and stops at the first piece. It does not reach past it.
Rule 3The square the blocker stands on still counts. The line stops after that square, not before it. This is true whether the blocker is yours or theirs — attacking your own piece is defending it.

Why the blocker's square counts

Because that is the square a capture would happen on. A rook on a1 with a friendly knight on a4 attacks a2, a3 and a4 — the knight's square included, which is exactly what makes the knight defended.

Block 2Do · ~20 min

Practice — ten positions, with the answer shown

The clock runs but nothing is at stake. Feedback is full at first and thins out, so by the last three you get the answer and nothing else.

Block 3Do · ~12 min

The check — twenty positions you have not seen

Drawn fresh from a held-out pool, so a retake is a new set rather than a memory test. No feedback until the end.

The gate is 18 of 20, each inside its cap. Two misses is not generosity — it is the width of a bad day. A third means the rule has not automated yet, which is a reason to keep drilling and not a verdict about you.

Block 4Ask · open-ended

The misses are the useful part

Add anything you got wrong, or got right and did not trust. The button below assembles every added position into one block of text and copies it. Paste it into the tutor project and argue about it.

Ask for the rule, not the answer

You already have the answer; it is in the packet. The question worth asking is which rule you applied wrongly, and whether the mistake was the rule or the reading. Those need opposite fixes — a misremembered rule gets restated, a misread board gets drilled.