Deflection: rook to h7
li-04O8qOpens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1202 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White 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 g1, queen f5, rook a1 h3, bishop b3, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 c3 e4 g4 d5.
Black: king g7, queen f6, rook a8 e8, bishop b7, knight g6, pawn b5 c5 e5 a6 d6 f7 h7.
13 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (30 against 32; 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 g7.
It is White to move on move 28, with 39 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 8 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: h.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28. Rxh7+ Kxh7 29. Qxf6
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h7 keeps the pressure (+4.8).
- Well found: queen to f6 (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kxh7, then Qxf6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 28. Rxh7+ — rook to h7 (capture) with check
- Kxh7 — king to h7 (capture)
- 29. Qxf6 — queen to f6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Deflection
Force the defender away from its duty — then strike what it guarded.
Deflection forces the guard to leave its post: a sacrifice or exchange drags it away from the piece or square it protects. First find the critical defender — the piece whose absence makes the mate or the material win possible. Then find the move it cannot ignore, which is usually a capture. Do not be stingy: if removing the guard wins the queen or mates, the sacrifice pays for itself many times over.
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.
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 008
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