Pin: pawn to d7
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2019 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 g1, queen h5, rook a1 e3, knight h6, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h2 c3 e6.
Black: king h8, queen d7, rook g7 f8, knight f4 g8, pawn d5 f5 a7 b7 c7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 24.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (29 against 31; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 24, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: d.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
24. exd7 Nxh5 25. Re8 Rxd7 26. Rxf8
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to d7 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: rook to e8 (+4.2).
- Strong! rook to f8 is the sharp choice (+4.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Nxh5, then Re8 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 24. exd7 — pawn to d7 (capture)
- Nxh5 — knight to h5 (capture)
- 25. Re8 — rook to e8
- Rxd7 — rook to d7 (capture)
- 26. Rxf8 — rook to f8 (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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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