Skewer: bishop to a4 (d7)
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The tactical motive
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 1436 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A skewer is a pin reversed — the valuable piece stands in front and, when it moves, the piece behind falls. Line your rook, bishop or queen up against the king or queen and win whatever is hiding behind it.
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 b3, rook a1 d1, bishop g2, knight e4, pawn a2 b2 e2 f2 h2 g3.
Black: king g8, queen a5, rook c8 f8, bishop f6 d7, pawn b4 e6 a7 f7 g7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 31 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 19, with 46 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
19... Ba4 20. Nxf6+ gxf6 21. Qf3 Bxd1
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to a4 keeps the pressure (+3.1).
- Well found: pawn to f6 (+3.5).
- Strong! bishop to d1 is the sharp choice (+3.8).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Nxf6+, then gxf6 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 19… Ba4 — bishop to a4
- 20. Nxf6+ — knight to f6 (capture) with check
- gxf6 — pawn to f6 (capture)
- 21. Qf3 — queen to f3
- Bxd1 — bishop to d1 (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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