Trap the pawn on b4
li-01V4gOpens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Trapped piece: an enemy piece has no safe squares — catch it.
Difficulty 1227 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A trapped piece has no safe square. Spot an enemy piece that has wandered offside or been hemmed in, then play the move that takes away its last escape and wins it — often a quiet pawn push or a covering minor piece.
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 d1, rook a1 f1, bishop d3 f4, pawn f2 g2 a3 b3 e3 h3 d4 c5.
Black: king g8, queen a5, rook d8 f8, bishop g7, knight f6 d7, pawn a4 d5 c6 g6 a7 e7 f7 h7.
14 white and 15 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 16.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (33 against 36; 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 g8.
It is White to move on move 16, with 39 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 8 pawns, Black 8. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
16. b4 Qb5 17. Bxb5
Why it works
- Best move. pawn to b4 is exactly what the engine plays (+4.2).
- Well found: bishop to b5 (+4.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qb5, then Bxb5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 16. b4 — pawn to b4
- Qb5 — queen to b5
- 17. Bxb5 — bishop to b5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
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 008
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