Mate in 1: bishop to f1
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The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Difficulty 1403 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
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 c4, bishop c1 d5, pawn a2 b3 g3 e4 f4 h4 e5.
Black: king e7, bishop h3 b6, pawn b4 a5 c5 h5 g6 f7.
10 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (13 against 12; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c4, the black king on e7.
It is Black to move on move 38, with 18 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: e.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
38... Bf1#
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f1 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 38… Bf1# — bishop to f1 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Boden's mate
Two bishops cross their diagonals over a king blocked by its own pieces.
Boden's mate crosses two bishop diagonals over a king blocked by its own pieces. The classic victim has castled on the queenside: its own rook and pawns have stolen the escape squares, and the bishops slash crosswise. The trigger is usually a queen sacrifice that blasts open the second diagonal. Whenever the enemy king is boxed in by its friends, ask whether both of your bishops can reach it on crossing diagonals.
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.
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 010
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