Pin: knight to g3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1266 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 h1, queen g2, rook d1, bishop c4, pawn a2 h2 b3 f3.
Black: king h6, queen h4, bishop d6, knight h5, pawn f5 g6 a7 h7.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 35.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (21 against 19; 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 h6.
It is Black to move on move 35, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
35... Ng3+ 36. Qxg3 Bxg3
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g3 keeps the pressure (+7.4).
- Well found: bishop to g3 (+7.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxg3, then Bxg3 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 35… Ng3+ — knight to g3 with check
- 36. Qxg3 — queen to g3 (capture)
- Bxg3 — bishop to g3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 009
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