Pin: queen to b4
li-03xAnOpens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1965 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 b1, queen c6, rook g1 h6, bishop e2, pawn a2 b2 c2 f5 f6 h7.
Black: king h8, queen a5, rook d8, knight g5, pawn c3 c4 a6 f7.
11 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 7 points of material (28 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on b1, the black king on h8.
It is Black to move on move 27, with 30 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, h.
The Black king has 0 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
27... Qb4 28. Qb7 Qxb7
Why it works
- Great move! queen to b4 keeps the pressure (+5.0).
- Well found: queen to b7 (+5.4).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qb7, then Qxb7 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 27… Qb4 — queen to b4
- 28. Qb7 — queen to b7
- Qxb7 — queen to b7 (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?
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
Similar puzzles
In your browser or in the Android app. Nothing to install · Free, no ads