En prise, and why the engine keeps saying it
It is French, it is said roughly on-PREEZ, and it means a piece is exposed to capture. When a game review uses the phrase about your move, it normally means you left something for free.
- Said on-PREEZ
- French for in take
- Strictly capturable; usually capturable for free
En prise is French for in take, and it means a piece stands where it can be captured. Strictly the phrase says nothing about whether capturing is a good idea. In practice, when an engine review or a commentator says a piece is en prise, they mean it can be taken for free, and that is the sense you will meet first.
It is worth learning the strict meaning anyway, because the difference between attacked and undefended is the difference between a position you should think about and a piece you have simply lost.
Attacked is not the same as hanging
The Ruy Lopez, from the first move. Watch the bishop that arrives on b5.
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6
The bishop on b5 is en prise: the a6 pawn attacks it and nothing defends it. It is also completely fine, because it has plenty of squares and taking the knight on c6 is a serious option in its own right.
That is the everyday case, and it is the one beginners panic about. A piece that is attacked and can move is not in trouble. A piece that is attacked, cannot move, and is not defended is the one your opponent takes. The word for that second thing is hanging, and if you want to be precise, en prise covers both while hanging covers only the second.
The reason engine reviews reach for the phrase so often is that the commonest way to lose a game below about 1400 is not a missed combination. It is a piece left standing somewhere with nothing guarding it, taken by an opponent who was not even looking for it.
How pieces end up there
Black to move. White has just moved the knight off c3. The question is not what the knight is doing now, it is what it was doing before.
Show the answer
29.Na4 29...Qxd1#
The line ends in checkmate. The position is from a real game on Lichess, rated 496 in their puzzle pool, and it is one of the positions in the Free Pieces skill in the trainer.
Pieces almost never start out en prise. They become en prise, and the cause is nearly always one of three things: the piece that was defending them moved somewhere else, the defender was chased away or deflected, or a line opened that was not open a move ago. In every one of those cases, the move that created the problem was not the move that put the piece on the square. That is exactly why it gets missed.
- After your opponent moves, ask what that move stopped defending, not what it attacks.
- Before you move, ask the same question about your own move. Most hanging pieces are created by the player who loses them.
- Scan for your own undefended pieces every few moves. Loose pieces drop off, and a piece that is merely undefended is a tactic waiting for your opponent to find.
- A piece defended by a pinned or overloaded piece is defended on paper only. Count real defenders.
Questions people ask
How do you pronounce en prise?
Roughly on-PREEZ, with a nasal on at the start and a z sound at the end, as in the French. English speakers also say ahn-PREEZ and nobody will correct you. It is two words in French and stays two words in English, so en prise rather than enprise, and it does not change form: a piece is en prise, and two pieces are en prise.
Is en prise the same as hanging?
Not quite, although most people use them interchangeably. En prise means capturable, whether or not the capture is good. Hanging means capturable and undefended, so the capture wins material outright. A defended bishop attacked by a pawn is en prise but not hanging; an undefended knight in the middle of the board is both.
What does en prise mean in a game review?
That your move left a piece where it could be taken for nothing, or failed to take a piece your opponent had left. Review tools use the phrase because it is shorter than the explanation. If it appears repeatedly in your reports, the fix is not calculation, it is the habit of checking what is undefended before you commit to a move.
Related
En prise sits under Words you hear at the board in the reference. Nearby: