Mate in 1: rook to h1 (h2)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Difficulty 1295 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
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 b2, rook a8, bishop e3, pawn f2 b3 c3 d4 g4 e5.
Black: king d7, rook h2, bishop e4 e7, pawn c4 b5 d5 e6 f7 g7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 6 points of material (23 against 17; 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 d7.
It is Black to move on move 28, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
Black 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
28... Rh1#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h1 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 28… Rh1# — rook to h1 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
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 009
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