Pin: knight to g5
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2080 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 h1, queen h5, rook g1, knight e4, pawn a2 h2 c3 b4 f4 f5.
Black: king h8, queen c8, rook g8, bishop f8, knight a6, pawn c6 h6 a7 b7 f7 g7.
10 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (23 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 h1, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 28, with 37 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: g.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28. Ng5 Qxf5 29. Nxf7+ Qxf7 30. Qxf7
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g5 keeps the pressure (+5.7).
- Well found: knight to f7 (+5.9).
- Strong! queen to f7 is the sharp choice (+5.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxf5, then Nxf7+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 28. Ng5 — knight to g5
- Qxf5 — queen to f5 (capture)
- 29. Nxf7+ — knight to f7 (capture) with check
- Qxf7 — queen to f7 (capture)
- 30. Qxf7 — queen to f7 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Discovered attack
A piece steps aside and opens a second attack from the piece behind it.
A discovered attack works like a curtain: one piece steps off the line and unveils the long-range piece behind it. The beauty is that the moving piece can create a second threat of its own — two attacks in one move. Look for your stacked pairs: a bishop or rook behind a knight or pawn, aimed through them at something valuable. Send the front piece to the most aggressive square — a discovery without a second threat wastes half its power.
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
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).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 015
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