Deflection: knight to f1
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1132 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
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 h2, queen e8, bishop g3 e6, pawn g2 h3 a4 d5.
Black: king g7, queen f6, bishop f8, knight e3, pawn a5 c5 h6.
8 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (19 against 18; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h2, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 38, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d, g.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
38... Nf1+ 39. Kg1 Nxg3
Why it works
- Great move! knight to f1 keeps the pressure (+5.1).
- Well found: knight to g3 (+5.2).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Kg1, then Nxg3 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 38… Nf1+ — knight to f1 with check
- 39. Kg1 — king to g1
- Nxg3 — knight to g3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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 007
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