Mate in 2: queen to h4 (h5)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1338 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 h1, queen d6, rook g1 g4, bishop c1 c4, pawn a2 f2 c3 f3 e4 h4.
Black: king g8, queen h5, rook h6 f8, bishop b6, knight f4, pawn e5 g6 a7 f7 h7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (31 against 30; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 28, with 27 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28... Qxh4+ 29. Rxh4 Rxh4#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h4 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: rook to h4 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Rxh4, then Rxh4# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 28… Qxh4+ — queen to h4 (capture) with check
- 29. Rxh4 — rook to h4 (capture)
- Rxh4# — rook to h4 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
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 010
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