Skewer: bishop to h4 (f6)
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The tactical motive
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 1829 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A skewer is a pin reversed — the valuable piece stands in front and, when it moves, the piece behind falls. Line your rook, bishop or queen up against the king or queen and win whatever is hiding behind it.
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 g3, rook e1, bishop a2 f4, pawn g2 h2 a3 d3 f3 b4 e4.
Black: king g8, queen d8, rook e8, bishop f6 b7, pawn c3 b5 a6 d6 f7 g7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 21.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (27 against 26; 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 Black to move on move 21, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: e, h.
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
21... Bh4 22. Qg4 Bxe1
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h4 keeps the pressure (+3.8).
- Well found: bishop to e1 (+4.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Qg4, then Bxe1 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 21… Bh4 — bishop to h4
- 22. Qg4 — queen to g4
- Bxe1 — bishop to e1 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Skewer
A line attack forces the valuable piece to move, exposing the one behind it.
A skewer is a pin turned inside out: the valuable piece stands in front and something cheaper hides behind it. The big piece must step aside, and you collect the one that was sheltering in its shadow. Scan for the enemy king or queen sharing a file, rank or diagonal with another enemy piece. The deadliest version comes with check — the king moves, the rook behind it dies.
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?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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