Family Fork
A knight fork that attacks the king, queen, and often another piece all at the same time.
Because the knight's unusual movement lets it attack multiple pieces of high value simultaneously, a family fork frequently wins material outright or forces the loss of the queen.
Etymology
The older and better-documented form of this term is family check, and Edward Winter has traced its print history in Chess Note 7194. Winter notes that a footnote on page 45 of Znosko-Borovsky's The Art of Chess Combination (London, 1936) reports that Bogoljubow wrote of a family check administered by knight to king, queen and two rooks, and that page 100 of Edward R. Brace's An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess (London, 1977) went further and claimed the term was devised by Bogoljubow. Winter's own earliest located citation is page 54 of Alekhine's Hastings, 1922 tournament book (page 50 in the Dover edition). Winter then asks pointedly why the phrase there is family check as opposed to family fork, so the family fork variant is not itself dated in his research. Wikipedia's fork article and glossary treat family fork and family check as synonyms for a knight fork of king, queen, and often further pieces.
First documented: 1922 — Alekhine's Hastings, 1922 tournament book, p. 54 (Dover edition p. 50), as the earliest citation located by Edward Winter, Chess Notes item 7194
Translations
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