Mate in 3: pawn to g7 (h6)
c9-21829naming 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.
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1630 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.
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third move.
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 e6, rook f1 h1, bishop c4, knight f2, pawn b2 g2 c3 a4 c6 h6.
Black: king h8, queen a8, rook e8, bishop e4 a7, pawn b7 c7 g7 h7.
12 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 7 points of material (31 against 24; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 25, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25. hxg7+ Kxg7 26. Qh6+ Kh8 27. Qf6#
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to g7 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Spot on — queen to h6 (#1).
- Precise: queen to f6 is the top choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Kxg7, then Qh6+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 25. hxg7+ — pawn to g7 (capture) with check
- Kxg7 — king to g7 (capture)
- 26. Qh6+ — queen to h6 with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 27. Qf6# — queen to f6 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
About this position
These pieces come from starting position #8.
SP-8 · RampartGuard — A b- or g-file king and two knights on inner files (b–g).
The king starts on g1, the rooks on f1 and h1, the queen on a1.
The king already stands on its castled square, so castling short moves only the rook, from h1 to f1.
The bishops stand on b1 and e1; their long diagonals reach h7 and a5 once the c- and d-pawns step aside.
The pawn on 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 957.
The engine's main line opens with h4.
Morozov Balance Index: 18 of 100 — class D — largest edge. Engine evaluation of the starting position: +38 centipawns for White (depth 48, 400 000 000 nodes).
Explore position #8Provenance
Mined from the project's engine self-play games.
Pack 012 · SP-8
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