Pin: queen to f8
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1829 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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.
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 a4, queen c5, bishop e6, pawn c2 d7.
Black: king h8, rook b2 f8, bishop g7, pawn a3 h6.
5 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 45.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (14 against 15; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on a4, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 45, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 2 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, e, f, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: a, h.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
45. Qxf8+ Bxf8 46. d8=Q Rb4+ 47. Ka5
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f8 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: pawn to d8 (+5.1).
- Strong! king to a5 is the sharp choice (+5.1).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Bxf8, then d8=Q and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 45. Qxf8+ — queen to f8 (capture) with check
- Bxf8 — bishop to f8 (capture)
- 46. d8=Q — pawn to d8
- Rb4+ — rook to b4 with check
- 47. Ka5 — king to a5
Types in this puzzle
Decoy
A sacrifice lures the king or a piece onto a fatal square.
A decoy is the mirror image of deflection: you sacrifice to drag the king or a piece onto a fatal square. The classic is a queen or rook sac whose capture pulls the king into a knight fork, a discovered check or mate. Find the square where the target will be hit, then find the offer it cannot refuse. Calculate to the very end — a decoy only works when the follow-up is forced.
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.
Promotion race
Both sides push passers — win the race by a tempo.
A promotion race is a sprint between two passed pawns: both sides push toward the last rank, and victory goes to whoever queens first or queens with check. You will recognize it when both players have far-advanced passers that neither king can catch. Count the tempi literally, move by move, all the way to promotion. The classic mistake is spending a tempo on a "useful" move — in a race, almost any non-pawn move loses.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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