Board vision · unit 4

Loose pieces

Sweeping a whole position for undefended material — the question the seeds course is built on.

Not started

clean = right, and inside the cap

What this unit is for

This is the unit the other three were for. Loose pieces drop off is the oldest slogan in tactics, and it is only useful to someone who can find them without being told to look.

It is also the first unit where the answer is sometimes nothing. Deciding a position has no loose material is a real answer and a real skill — puzzles never ask it, and games ask it constantly.

Not in this unit

Not whether the loose piece can be won — that is tactics.
Not counting attackers, only whether there are none.
Not kings.

Block 1Read · ~8 min

The rules

Rule 1A piece is loose if no friendly piece defends it — that is, no piece of its own colour attacks the square it stands on. Nothing else matters.
Rule 2Loose is not the same as hanging. Hanging is loose and attacked. A loose piece in the corner with no enemy near it is perfectly safe today, and is still loose — it is what makes a future fork or discovery work.
Rule 3Kings do not count. A king cannot be defended in any sense that matters, so it is never listed.
Rule 4Sweep in a fixed order, every time — queen, rooks, bishops, knights, pawns. An unordered scan misses the same piece twice.

The answer is sometimes nothing

Roughly one position in ten here has no loose material for the side asked. Submitting an empty answer is how you say so, and it is scored the same as any other answer. If you find yourself tapping something because a question must have an answer, that is the reflex this unit exists to break.

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.