Pin: queen to h7
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1438 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A pin freezes a piece in front of a more valuable one behind it. Scan the ranks, files and diagonals your bishop, rook or queen controls: if an enemy piece cannot move without exposing its king or queen, it is pinned and can be piled on or bypassed.
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 c1 h3, pawn a2 f2 g2 h2 c3 b4 d4.
Black: king g8, queen f6, rook c7 c8, knight a4, pawn b5 d5 a6 e6 g7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (26 against 27; 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 g8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 5. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: e.
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
31. Qh7+ Kf7 32. Rf3 Qxf3 33. gxf3
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h7 keeps the pressure (+3.0).
- Well found: rook to f3 (+3.0).
- Strong! pawn to f3 is the sharp choice (+3.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kf7, then Rf3 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 31. Qh7+ — queen to h7 with check
- Kf7 — king to f7
- 32. Rf3 — rook to f3
- Qxf3 — queen to f3 (capture)
- 33. gxf3 — pawn to f3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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 011
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