Pin: rook to b8 (b1)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2249 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
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 g1, queen e7, rook b1 d1, pawn f2 g2 h2.
Black: king g8, queen c6, rook c2 e8, pawn a4 f7 g7 h7.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 32.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (22 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 g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 32, with 48 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c, d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: a.
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
32. Rb8 Re2 33. Rxe8+ Qxe8 34. Qxe2
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b8 keeps the pressure (+5.9).
- Well found: rook to e8 (+6.2).
- Strong! queen to e2 is the sharp choice (+6.3).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Re2, then Rxe8+ and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 32. Rb8 — rook to b8
- Re2 — rook to e2
- 33. Rxe8+ — rook to e8 (capture) with check
- Qxe8 — queen to e8 (capture)
- 34. Qxe2 — queen to e2 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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.
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 015
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