Mate in 1: rook to h4 (c4)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Difficulty 1228 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
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 h3, queen f5, rook a1 f1, knight g3, pawn f3 h4 g6.
Black: king g8, queen e6, rook b2 c4, bishop e7, pawn c5 e5 g7.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 39.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 25 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 39, with 43 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f, h.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
39... Rxh4#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h4 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 39… Rxh4# — rook to h4 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
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.
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 008
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