Pin: knight to f6 (d5)
li-03Mynnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1530 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
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.
Here the task is defensive: one of your pieces is under attack and must be rescued without losing more. Look for a move that saves it with tempo — a counter-check, an equal counter-attack or an interposition — rather than a passive retreat.
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 h3, queen d2, rook g2, knight d5, pawn b2 a3 f4.
Black: king g8, queen f1, rook e4, bishop c5, pawn c4 a6 d6 h6 f7 g7.
7 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 46.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (20 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h3, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 46, with 27 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, d, g, h.
The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
46. Nf6+ Kf8 47. Nxe4 Qf3+ 48. Ng3
Why it works
- Great move! knight to f6 keeps the pressure (+3.4).
- Well found: knight to e4 (+3.6).
- Strong! knight to g3 is the sharp choice (+3.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kf8, then Nxe4 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 46. Nf6+ — knight to f6 with check
- Kf8 — king to f8
- 47. Nxe4 — knight to e4 (capture)
- Qf3+ — queen to f3 with check
- 48. Ng3 — knight to g3
Types in this puzzle
Royal fork
A fork with check: the king must move, and the second piece is lost.
A royal fork is a fork with check — one of the two targets is the king itself. The check must be answered first, so nobody is left to rescue the second piece. Look for squares where your piece gives check and simultaneously attacks an undefended queen or rook. It is the most reliable fork of all, because your opponent literally has no choice.
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.
Save the piece
The attacked piece can be saved — with profit.
Saving the piece: one of your pieces is attacked, and the job is not to lose it for nothing. There are several tools: retreat with tempo, defend it, block the attack, or create a bigger counter-threat. Before retreating automatically, look for a retreat that attacks something — you save the piece and gain time in one move. The typical mistake is panicking onto the first available square, where the piece gets trapped again.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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