Mate in 2: pin on f5
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1487 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White 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.
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 c1, queen a7, rook e1, bishop a3 e4, pawn b2 c3 h3 g4 d5.
Black: king c8, queen b5, rook d8 h8, bishop d1, knight a5 g6, pawn e5 g5 b7 c7 g7 h7.
10 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 9 points of material (25 against 34; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on c8.
It is White to move on move 25, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25. Bf5+ Rd7 26. Qa8#
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f5 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: queen to a8 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Rd7, then Qa8# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 25. Bf5+ — bishop to f5 with check
- Rd7 — rook to d7
- 26. Qa8# — queen to a8 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Back-rank mate
The king is locked behind its own pawns — a heavy piece strikes the last rank.
The back-rank mate strikes a king locked behind its own unmoved pawns when a rook or queen crashes onto the last rank. The signs: no escape hole in front of the king, and the back rank guarded by a single piece or by nobody at all. Often that lone guard is deflected or traded off first, and only then comes the invasion. In your own games, make luft in time — one pawn move prevents a sudden catastrophe.
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).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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