chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

, a flight square or escape square is a safe

square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90- degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...

to which a piece, especially a king, can move if it is threatened. Providing one's piece with flight squares can prevent the opponent from winning material or delivering

checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...

. For example, in the Morphy Defence, the white c-pawn may be advanced to provide the light-squared white

bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ...

with a flight square. Conversely, it is possible to take away an enemy piece's flight squares, known as domination.

Luft

, (the German word for "

air The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing f ...

", sometimes also "space" or "breath") designates the space or square left by a

pawn Pawn most often refers to: * Pawn (chess), the weakest and most numerous piece in the game * Pawnbroker or pawnshop, a business that provides loans by taking personal property as collateral Pawn may also refer to: Places * Pawn, Oregon, an his ...

move into which a

king King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...

(usually a castled one) may then retreat, especially such a space made intentionally to avoid

back-rank checkmate In chess, a back-rank checkmate (also known as the corridor mate) is a checkmate delivered by a rook or queen along a back rank (that is, the row on which the pieces ot pawnsstand at the start of the game) in which the mated king is unable to ...

. A move leaving such a space is often said to "give the king some luft". The term "luft", "lufting", or "lufted" may also be used (as an English

participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

) to refer to the movement of the relevant pawn creating luft. (At the 45:26 mark, GM

Ben Finegold Benjamin Philip Finegold (born September 6, 1969) is an American chess grandmaster and YouTuber/Twitch streamer. He had previously been nicknamed the "strongest International Master in the United States" until receiving his Grandmaster (GM) ti ...

of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Atlanta examines a game lost because the player is unable to luft due to his own pieces blockading his pawns.) Preventing an opponent from lufting a pawn (for example by pinning it or moving a piece to the square in front of it) is a tactic that may lead to checkmate. A king's access to his luft might also be denied by the opponent subjecting the space or square to attack. The German is a close

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ef ...

to the English "lift", which is also used in chess, e.g., .

Examples

In the diagram at left, "X"s mark ''luft'' to which the king can escape back-rank checkmate delivered by the queen. Theoretical enemy knights in the indicated positions deny the king access to his ''luft''. Black dots indicate areas where threats emanating from enemy pieces capable of capturing diagonally could also deny access. The

pawn structure In a game of chess, the pawn structure (sometimes known as the pawn skeleton) is the configuration of pawns on the chessboard. Because pawns are the least mobile of the chess pieces, the pawn structure is relatively static and thus plays a large ...

seen in Black's position is , but it is a risk commonly accepted to

fianchetto In chess, the fianchetto ( or ; "little flank") is a pattern of wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent b- or g-, the having been moved one or two squares forward. The fianchetto is a staple of many " hypermodern" ...

. Being up a queen in the game on the right, Black will win unless he overlooks the threat of Ng6 (which sets up checkmate via Rh8#). Black wouldn't be able to capture the knight or create luft because his f-pawn is pinned by White's bishop, and his g-pawn cannot advance if a piece is on g6 blockading it. White's king is temporarily safe from check in his luft. (Black can neutralize the threat of Ng6 by playing Qb8, as then Ng6 can be met by the discovered check of Nf5+, winning the checkmate-threatening h4 rook after White reacts.)

References

Bibliography # # #Larry., Evans, (2011). ''New ideas in chess''. Cardoza Publishing.

ISBN The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition a ...

978-1-58042-274-1.

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It wa ...

646112792. Chess terminology Chess strategy {{chess-stub