Pin: rook to h6
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1346 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
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 f2, queen d2, rook h4, bishop b2, pawn g2 a3 f3 d5.
Black: king h8, queen d6, rook f7 a8, pawn f5 b6 h6 a7 g7.
8 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (21 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 f2, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, h.
The White king has 5 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
31. Rxh6+ Qxh6 32. Qxh6+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h6 keeps the pressure (+5.4).
- Well found: queen to h6 (+5.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxh6, then Qxh6+ and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 31. Rxh6+ — rook to h6 (capture) with check
- Qxh6 — queen to h6 (capture)
- 32. Qxh6+ — queen to h6 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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.
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 010
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