Pin: knight to b3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1227 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black 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 c1, queen d2, rook d1 h1, bishop e3 b7, knight e2, pawn b2 c2 f3 e4 g5.
Black: king b8, queen c7, rook d8 h8, bishop e7, knight c5, pawn e5 a6 d6 g7.
12 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 24.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 4 points of material (33 against 29; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on b8.
It is Black to move on move 24, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, c, f.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
24... Nb3+ 25. Kb1 Nxd2+
Why it works
- Great move! knight to b3 keeps the pressure (+3.9).
- Well found: knight to d2 (+4.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kb1, then Nxd2+ and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 24… Nb3+ — knight to b3 with check
- 25. Kb1 — king to b1
- Nxd2+ — knight to d2 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Royal fork
A fork with check: the king must move, and the second piece is lost.
A royal fork is a fork with check — one of the two targets is the king itself. The check must be answered first, so nobody is left to rescue the second piece. Look for squares where your piece gives check and simultaneously attacks an undefended queen or rook. It is the most reliable fork of all, because your opponent literally has no choice.
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.
Check chase
Every move is a check — the king is chased into losing ground.
In a check chase every one of your moves is a check, so the opponent never gets a free second. The king is herded across the board until it loses a piece or walks into a decisive blow. Such lines are the easiest to calculate: each check allows only a handful of replies, so try them all. Make it a habit to start calculating any sharp position with the checks — they are the most forcing moves on the board.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 008
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