Deflection: rook to e6 (d6)
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1541 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 h2, queen a3, rook d6, bishop e5, pawn f2 g2 h3 d4.
Black: king g6, queen a7, rook e7 e8, pawn d5 f5 g5 e6 h6.
8 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 39.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (21 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 h2, the black king on g6.
It is White to move on move 39, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
39. Rxe6+ Rxe6 40. Qxa7 Rxe5 41. dxe5
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e6 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: queen to a7 (+4.9).
- Strong! pawn to e5 is the sharp choice (+4.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rxe6, then Qxa7 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 39. Rxe6+ — rook to e6 (capture) with check
- Rxe6 — rook to e6 (capture)
- 40. Qxa7 — queen to a7 (capture)
- Rxe5 — rook to e5 (capture)
- 41. dxe5 — pawn to e5 (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.
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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