Pin: bishop to b6
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1540 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black 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 d4, rook a1, bishop c1, knight f3, pawn g2 a3 b3 d3 h3 b4.
Black: king g8, queen d5, rook a8, bishop c7, knight b8, pawn f6 a7 b7 g7.
11 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (26 against 24; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 25, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d, h.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25... Bb6 26. Qxb6 axb6
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to b6 keeps the pressure (+5.4).
- Well found: pawn to b6 (+5.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxb6, then axb6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 25… Bb6 — bishop to b6
- 26. Qxb6 — queen to b6 (capture)
- axb6 — pawn to b6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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