Deflection: rook to a6
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1278 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White 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 b2, queen d7, rook a7, pawn c2 b3 d3 h3.
Black: king b6, queen c6, rook f2, pawn d4 b5 c5 e5 h6.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 19; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on b2, the black king on b6.
It is White to move on move 37, with 32 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, f, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
The White king has 5 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37. Ra6+ Kxa6 38. Qxc6+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to a6 keeps the pressure (+7.0).
- Well found: queen to c6 (+6.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kxa6, then Qxc6+ and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 37. Ra6+ — rook to a6 with check
- Kxa6 — king to a6 (capture)
- 38. Qxc6+ — queen to c6 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Skewer
A line attack forces the valuable piece to move, exposing the one behind it.
A skewer is a pin turned inside out: the valuable piece stands in front and something cheaper hides behind it. The big piece must step aside, and you collect the one that was sheltering in its shadow. Scan for the enemy king or queen sharing a file, rank or diagonal with another enemy piece. The deadliest version comes with check — the king moves, the rook behind it dies.
Check chase
Every move is a check — the king is chased into losing ground.
In a check chase every one of your moves is a check, so the opponent never gets a free second. The king is herded across the board until it loses a piece or walks into a decisive blow. Such lines are the easiest to calculate: each check allows only a handful of replies, so try them all. Make it a habit to start calculating any sharp position with the checks — they are the most forcing moves on the board.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 009
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