Winning blow: knight to f5 (g3·17)
c9-14004naming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Chess960 twist: use the unusual starting setup of the pieces.
Winning tactic: there is a move that gains a decisive advantage — find it.
Difficulty 1750 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
In Chess960 the pieces start on unfamiliar squares, so tactics appear earlier and from unusual angles. Do not trust classical patterns — read the actual lines of the bishops, the rooks and the queen from where they really stand in this position.
This position hides a concrete tactic that wins material or mates. Start with the most forcing candidate moves — checks, captures and threats — and calculate each to a clear end before choosing; the winning line is usually the one the opponent cannot meet.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g1, queen g6, rook e1 h6, bishop a1, knight g3, pawn a2 g2 e3 h5.
Black: king g8, queen g7, rook c6 f8, bishop c7 a8, pawn f4 f6 a7 d7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 29 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 27, with 37 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, f.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
27. Nf5 Qxg6 28. hxg6 Rf7 29. gxf7+
Why it works
- Great move! knight to f5 keeps the pressure (+8.2).
- Spot on — pawn to g6 (+8.2).
- Precise: pawn to f7 is the top choice (+5.4).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxg6, then hxg6 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 27. Nf5 — knight to f5
- Qxg6 — queen to g6 (capture)
- 28. hxg6 — pawn to g6 (capture)
- Rf7 — rook to f7
- 29. gxf7+ — pawn to f7 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Remove the defender
Capture the guard first — then take what it protected.
Removing the defender is the straightforward plan: capture the guard first, then take what it guarded. Unlike deflection, the defender is not lured away — it is traded off or destroyed on the spot. Stare at the target you crave and ask who defends it, and whether that defender can be profitably eaten. Count the whole capture sequence, not just the first move — the trade must pay off at the end.
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
About this position
These pieces come from starting position #112.
SP-112 · RampartGuard — Both knights begin on inner files while the king sits on the wing (b/g); mirror twins stay together in this family.
The king starts on g1, the rooks on e1 and h1, the queen on d1.
The king already stands on its castled square, so castling short moves only the rook, from h1 to f1.
A bishop starts in the corner on a1: it has a single diagonal, which the b-pawn unlocks, running out to h8.
The pawn on f2, g2 is defended by the king alone — the same soft spot f2 is in the classical setup.
The setup belongs to the RampartGuard family; read right to left it becomes position 847.
The engine's main line opens with c4.
Morozov Balance Index: 21 of 100 — class D — largest edge. Engine evaluation of the starting position: +36 centipawns for White (depth 45, 400 000 000 nodes).
Explore position #112Provenance
Mined from the project's engine self-play games.
Pack 013 · SP-112
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