Mate in 3: knight to g3
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The tactical motive
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1202 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third move.
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 d1, rook a1 f1, knight d3, pawn a2 b2 g2 h2 c3 g3.
Black: king c8, queen c5, rook f6, knight f5, pawn d5 e6 a7 b7 g7 h7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 20.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 5 points of material (28 against 23; 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 c8.
It is Black to move on move 20, with 41 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): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
20... Nxg3+ 21. hxg3 Rh6+ 22. Qh5 Rxh5#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g3 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: rook to h6 (#1).
- Strong! rook to h5 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead hxg3, then Rh6+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 20… Nxg3+ — knight to g3 (capture) with check
- 21. hxg3 — pawn to g3 (capture)
- Rh6+ — rook to h6 with check
- 22. Qh5 — queen to h5
- Rxh5# — rook to h5 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
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 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 008
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