Pin: queen to h3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1299 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
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 f1, queen f2, rook a1 e1, knight f3, pawn a3 d3 e4 c5.
Black: king g8, queen g3, rook g6 e8, pawn h5 a6 b7 f7 g7.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 32.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (26 against 24; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 32, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: c, d, e.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
32... Qh3+ 33. Ke2 Rg2 34. Ke3 Rxf2
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h3 keeps the pressure (+3.6).
- Well found: rook to g2 (+3.7).
- Strong! rook to f2 is the sharp choice (+3.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Ke2, then Rg2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 32… Qh3+ — queen to h3 with check
- 33. Ke2 — king to e2
- Rg2 — rook to g2
- 34. Ke3 — king to e3
- Rxf2 — rook to f2 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
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.
Queen trap
The strongest piece ventures too far — and cannot come back.
A queen trap catches the strongest piece after it ventures too far and finds no way home. The usual story is a queen grabbing a distant pawn — the classic poisoned pawn. The warning signs: the queen has few retreat squares, and enemy minor pieces cut them off one by one, gaining tempo with every move. Before your queen snacks on a pawn in enemy territory, count her escape routes — fewer than two means stay home.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 009
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