Mate in 2: bishop to h2 (e5)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1264 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 g1, queen b3, rook d1 f1, bishop c1, knight e6, pawn b2 f2 g2 a3 h3 e4.
Black: king h8, queen c7, rook a8 f8, bishop e5, knight h4, pawn f3 b5 a6 c6 g7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 23.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 31 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 h8.
It is Black to move on move 23, with 45 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 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 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
23... Bh2+ 24. Kh1 fxg2#
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h2 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: pawn to g2 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Kh1, then fxg2# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 23… Bh2+ — bishop to h2 with check
- 24. Kh1 — king to h1
- fxg2# — pawn to g2 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Pawn mate
The humblest soldier delivers the final blow.
The pawn mate lets the humblest soldier land the final blow. It happens to a king stuck among its own and enemy pieces: the pawn strikes diagonally from one square away and there is nowhere left to run. The sign: the squares around the king are covered or occupied, and your pawn stands one step from striking distance. Never write pawns out of your attack — their blows are the cheapest and therefore the most humiliating.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 009
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