Deflection: pawn to a5
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1450 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, rook h7, bishop d5, pawn g2 b3 e3 a4 e4.
Black: king b6, rook g3 c7, pawn b4 c5 d6.
8 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 49.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 13 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on b6.
It is White to move on move 49, with 25 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, d.
The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
49. a5+ Kxa5 50. Rxc7
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to a5 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: rook to c7 (+5.0).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kxa5, then Rxc7 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 49. a5+ — pawn to a5 with check
- Kxa5 — king to a5 (capture)
- 50. Rxc7 — rook to c7 (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.
Passed pawn
Nothing can stop the passer — escort it to the last rank.
A passed pawn has no enemy pawns in front of it or on the neighboring files: only pieces can stop it. Check who can blockade the pawn or catch it with the king — if nobody can, the pawn is worth a whole piece. Push the passer with your pieces supporting it, and put your rook behind it. The beginner's mistake is shoving the pawn forward unprotected, straight into a capture.
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 011
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