Pin: bishop to h6
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 966 ShuffleRating — for beginners taking their first steps in Chess960 tactics.
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 d2, rook g5, bishop d5, pawn c2 f2 b3 d3 e4.
Black: king c8, rook h8, bishop f8, pawn d4 c5 a6 d6 h7.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 33.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 13 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on d2, the black king on c8.
It is Black to move on move 33, with 12 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, e, f.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
33... Bh6 34. f4 Bxg5
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h6 keeps the pressure (+3.4).
- Well found: bishop to g5 (+3.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead f4, then Bxg5 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 33… Bh6 — bishop to h6
- 34. f4 — pawn to f4
- Bxg5 — bishop to g5 (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.
Endgame tactic
Tactics live in the endgame too — strike while material is scarce.
Tactics do not retire when the queens come off: forks, pins and double attacks live on in the endgame. With so little material left, every tactical loss is almost always decisive. The signs are the usual ones — undefended pieces, king and piece on one line, a pawn about to promote. Even in a "technical" ending, scan for a shot before every move, both yours and your opponent's.
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 005
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