Fork: queen to d5 (d6)
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Fork: one piece attacks two targets at once — they can't both be saved.
Difficulty 1355 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
A fork is one piece attacking two targets at once. Look for a knight, pawn or queen move that lands where it hits the king (or a bigger piece) and a second undefended unit on the same turn — the opponent can save only one.
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 g2, queen c3, rook b7, pawn f2 a3 g3 h3 b4.
Black: king h7, queen d6, rook d1, pawn a4 g6 h6 f7.
8 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (19 against 18; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g2, the black king on h7.
It is Black to move on move 37, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37... Qd5+ 38. Qf3 Rg1+ 39. Kxg1 Qxf3
Why it works
- Great move! queen to d5 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: rook to g1 (+5.1).
- Strong! queen to f3 is the sharp choice (+5.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qf3, then Rg1+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 37… Qd5+ — queen to d5 with check
- 38. Qf3 — queen to f3
- Rg1+ — rook to g1 with check
- 39. Kxg1 — king to g1 (capture)
- Qxf3 — queen to f3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
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.
Deflection
Force the defender away from its duty — then strike what it guarded.
Deflection forces the guard to leave its post: a sacrifice or exchange drags it away from the piece or square it protects. First find the critical defender — the piece whose absence makes the mate or the material win possible. Then find the move it cannot ignore, which is usually a capture. Do not be stingy: if removing the guard wins the queen or mates, the sacrifice pays for itself many times over.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 010
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