Deflection: rook to h6
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1138 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, queen f4, rook a1 h2, pawn d2 e3 g3 f6.
Black: king h7, queen g4, rook d3 g6, pawn b4 c4 h6 a7 f7.
8 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 44.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (23 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 h7.
It is White to move on move 44, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: a, b, c, h.
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
44. Rxh6+ Rxh6 45. Qxg4
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h6 keeps the pressure (+4.5).
- Well found: queen to g4 (+5.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rxh6, then Qxg4 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 44. Rxh6+ — rook to h6 (capture) with check
- Rxh6 — rook to h6 (capture)
- 45. Qxg4 — queen to g4 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 007
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