Pin: queen to f8 (d8)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2146 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 h1, queen d8, rook f1 f7, bishop b1, knight g3, pawn a2 b2 g2 e4 h4.
Black: king h7, queen d7, rook e5 e7, bishop g4 g7, pawn c4 b5 h5 a6 d6 g6.
11 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (30 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 h1, the black king on h7.
It is White to move on move 38, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, d.
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
38. Qf8 Rxf7 39. Rxf7 Qxf7 40. Qxf7
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f8 keeps the pressure (+3.3).
- Well found: rook to f7 (+3.6).
- Strong! queen to f7 is the sharp choice (+3.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rxf7, then Rxf7 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 38. Qf8 — queen to f8
- Rxf7 — rook to f7 (capture)
- 39. Rxf7 — rook to f7 (capture)
- Qxf7 — queen to f7 (capture)
- 40. Qxf7 — queen to f7 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
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.
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?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 015
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