Trap the bishop on g5
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The tactical motive
Trapped piece: an enemy piece has no safe squares — catch it.
Difficulty 1371 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A trapped piece has no safe square. Spot an enemy piece that has wandered offside or been hemmed in, then play the move that takes away its last escape and wins it — often a quiet pawn push or a covering minor piece.
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 h2, queen e2, rook a1 g1, bishop c1 f3, pawn a2 b2 c2 d3 h3 e4.
Black: king h8, queen h4, rook a8 f8, bishop d7, knight f6, pawn c5 e5 f5 d6 a7 b7 f7 h7.
12 white and 14 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (31 against 33; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h2, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 18, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 8. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: f.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
18. Bg5 Qxg5 19. Rxg5
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to g5 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: rook to g5 (+4.7).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxg5, then Rxg5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 18. Bg5 — bishop to g5
- Qxg5 — queen to g5 (capture)
- 19. Rxg5 — rook to g5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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?
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 010
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