Pin: queen to g3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1841 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 g1, queen a3, rook e1 g4, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h3.
Black: king b8, queen c2, rook g8 h8, bishop a6, pawn d5 e6 a7 b7 f7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (24 against 27; 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 b8.
It is White to move on move 28, with 44 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, e.
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
28. Qg3+ e5 29. Rxg8+ Rxg8 30. Qxg8+
Why it works
- Great move! queen to g3 keeps the pressure (+5.4).
- Well found: rook to g8 (+5.6).
- Strong! queen to g8 is the sharp choice (+5.7).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead e5, then Rxg8+ and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 28. Qg3+ — queen to g3 with check
- e5 — pawn to e5
- 29. Rxg8+ — rook to g8 (capture) with check
- Rxg8 — rook to g8 (capture)
- 30. Qxg8+ — queen to g8 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Clearance
Clear your own piece out of the way — with tempo — for the decisive blow.
Clearance is about your own piece standing in the way of the decisive blow — so you move it aside, or even throw it away. The key is to clear with tempo: jump off with a check, a capture or a threat, giving the opponent no time to regroup. The telltale sign: you see a crushing queen or rook move, but one of your own pieces blocks the line or occupies the square. Do not cling to it — a clearance sacrifice usually costs less than a missed attack.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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