Mate in 2: rook to a4 (d4)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 2289 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 a3, queen e3, bishop f1, knight g3, pawn a2 b3 f3.
Black: king g8, rook d4, bishop e6, knight d3, pawn b5 e5 f6 a7 f7 h7.
7 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 33.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (18 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 a3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 33, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
33... Ra4+ 34. bxa4 b4#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to a4 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: pawn to b4 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead bxa4, then b4# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 33… Ra4+ — rook to a4 with check
- 34. bxa4 — pawn to a4 (capture)
- b4# — pawn to b4 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Pawn mate
The humblest soldier delivers the final blow.
The pawn mate lets the humblest soldier land the final blow. It happens to a king stuck among its own and enemy pieces: the pawn strikes diagonally from one square away and there is nowhere left to run. The sign: the squares around the king are covered or occupied, and your pawn stands one step from striking distance. Never write pawns out of your attack — their blows are the cheapest and therefore the most humiliating.
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.
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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