Pin: pawn to g5
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1935 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.
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 h4, queen g3, rook e1, bishop f3, knight c3, pawn g2 a3 h3 d5.
Black: king g8, queen f2, bishop b7, knight b2, pawn b6 a7 d7 f7 g7.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 30.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 4 points of material (24 against 20; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h4, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 30, 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): c, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: h.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
30... g5+ 31. Kg4 f5+ 32. Kxf5 Qxg3
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to g5 keeps the pressure (+5.7).
- Well found: pawn to f5 (+5.6).
- Strong! queen to g3 is the sharp choice (+5.6).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kg4, then f5+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 30… g5+ — pawn to g5 with check
- 31. Kg4 — king to g4
- f5+ — pawn to f5 with check
- 32. Kxf5 — king to f5 (capture)
- Qxg3 — queen to g3 (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.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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