Deflection: pawn to e5
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1651 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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.
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 d4, rook a1 f1, bishop g2, knight d2, pawn f2 h2 c3 e3 g3 a4 b4.
Black: king g8, queen e2, rook a8 f8, bishop c8, knight f6, pawn d5 e6 a7 b7 f7 g7 h7.
13 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 14.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 32 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 14, with 32 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: c.
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
14... e5 15. Qxe5 Qxd2
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to e5 keeps the pressure (+3.4).
- Well found: queen to d2 (+3.4).
- You reach a winning position (+3.4).
- If instead Qxe5, then Qxd2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 14… e5 — pawn to e5
- 15. Qxe5 — queen to e5 (capture)
- Qxd2 — queen to d2 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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.
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 013
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