Pin: knight to f4
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1608 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 g2, queen h5, rook g1 a2, pawn f2 d3 g3 h3 a4 c4 e4 b5.
Black: king h7, rook f6 g8, bishop c5, knight e6, pawn a5 e5 b6 h6 c7 f7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 30.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 5 points of material (27 against 22; 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 30, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 8 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: d, g.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
30... Nf4+ 31. Kh2 Nxh5
Why it works
- Great move! knight to f4 keeps the pressure (+6.5).
- Well found: knight to h5 (+6.6).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kh2, then Nxh5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 30… Nf4+ — knight to f4 with check
- 31. Kh2 — king to h2
- Nxh5 — knight to h5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Royal fork
A fork with check: the king must move, and the second piece is lost.
A royal fork is a fork with check — one of the two targets is the king itself. The check must be answered first, so nobody is left to rescue the second piece. Look for squares where your piece gives check and simultaneously attacks an undefended queen or rook. It is the most reliable fork of all, because your opponent literally has no choice.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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