Trap the bishop on e5
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The tactical motive
Trapped piece: an enemy piece has no safe squares — catch it.
Difficulty 1639 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A trapped piece has no safe square. Spot an enemy piece that has wandered offside or been hemmed in, then play the move that takes away its last escape and wins it — often a quiet pawn push or a covering minor piece.
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 g1, queen g3, rook a1 f1, knight e4 f5, pawn g2 a3 e3 h4 d6.
Black: king e8, queen b6, rook b2 g8, bishop f6, knight d3, pawn c4 g4 a7 e7 h7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 30 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on e8.
It is Black to move on move 27, with 55 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d.
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
27... Be5 28. Qxe5 Nxe5
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to e5 keeps the pressure (+3.3).
- Well found: knight to e5 (+3.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxe5, then Nxe5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 27… Be5 — bishop to e5
- 28. Qxe5 — queen to e5 (capture)
- Nxe5 — knight to e5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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