Mate in 2: queen to h5 (h8)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1663 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 e2, queen h8, rook a1, bishop f4, knight f1, pawn a2 f3 b4 g4 d5.
Black: king g6, queen d8, rook a8, bishop c3 c8, knight c4 b7, pawn b5 e5 a6 c7 g7.
10 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 36.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 6 points of material (25 against 31; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on e2, the black king on g6.
It is White to move on move 36, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, e.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
36. Qh5+ Kf6 37. Bg5#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h5 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: bishop to g5 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Kf6, then Bg5# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 36. Qh5+ — queen to h5 with check
- Kf6 — king to f6
- 37. Bg5# — bishop to g5 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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