Deflection: pawn to h5
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1356 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 g4, rook f3, pawn g3 f4 h4.
Black: king f7, rook a3, pawn h6 g7.
5 white and 4 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 40.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (8 against 7; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g4, the black king on f7.
It is Black to move on move 40, with 22 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c, d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f.
The Black king has 7 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
40... h5+ 41. Kg5 Rxf3
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to h5 keeps the pressure (+5.5).
- Well found: rook to f3 (+6.5).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kg5, then Rxf3 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 40… h5+ — pawn to h5 with check
- 41. Kg5 — king to g5
- Rxf3 — rook to f3 (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.
Rook endgame
The most common endgame — activity decides everything.
The rook endgame is the most common of all: rooks and pawns on the board. Its first law is activity — a rook behind a passed pawn beats a rook passively babysitting one. The sign of a correct plan is that your rook is attacking something, not guarding something. The typical error is locking your rook into defense: it is often better to give up a pawn and keep your rook and king active.
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 010
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