Winning blow: queen to e5 (h8·3)
c9-21281naming tag (square·N)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 2060 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
Position on the board
White: king h1, queen h8, rook f1 a7, bishop b1, knight g3, pawn h2 e4 f4 b6.
Black: king e7, queen d7, bishop f7, pawn d5 f5 e6 h7.
10 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37. Qe5 Qxa7 38. bxa7 Kd7 39. Qf6
Why it works
- Sensible development: queen to e5.
- Spot on — pawn to a7 (#3).
- A natural move: queen to f6.
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Bg6, then Rxd7+ and you win the queen.
Types in this puzzle
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 #796.
SP-796 · ThroneScout — A knight starts on the edge (a/h) and the king sits centrally on d or e; the mirror twin stays in this family too.
The king starts on d1, the rooks on a1 and f1, the queen on c1.
The kingside rook already stands on f1, so castling short moves only the king, from d1 to g1.
The bishops stand on b1 and g1; their long diagonals reach h7 and a7 once the c- and f-pawns step aside.
The pawn on e2 is defended by the king alone — the same soft spot f2 is in the classical setup.
The setup belongs to the ThroneScout family; read right to left it becomes position 172.
The engine's main line opens with c4.
Morozov Balance Index: 92 of 100 — class A — most balanced. Engine evaluation of the starting position: +12 centipawns for White (depth 45, 400 000 000 nodes).
Explore position #796Provenance
Mined from the project's engine self-play games.
Pack 015 · SP-796
Similar puzzles
Free, no ads · Android 8.0+ · coming soon to Google Play