Pin: knight to f6
li-05CqjOpens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1062 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White 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 g4, bishop e5, knight d7, pawn a2 b2 g2 h3 d4.
Black: king g8, queen f7, rook a7, bishop d5, pawn a5 c6 h6 g7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 34.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (20 against 21; 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 White to move on move 34, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
34. Nf6+ Qxf6 35. Bxf6
Why it works
- Great move! knight to f6 keeps the pressure (+4.7).
- Well found: bishop to f6 (+4.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxf6, then Bxf6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 34. Nf6+ — knight to f6 with check
- Qxf6 — queen to f6 (capture)
- 35. Bxf6 — bishop to f6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 007
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