Skewer: queen to f1
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The tactical motive
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 1497 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 d3, queen b5, rook d6, bishop c5, pawn a3 e3 f3 g3 b4.
Black: king g8, queen g2, rook e8, knight g6, pawn a4 f7 g7 h7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 36.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (22 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 d3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 36, with 35 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): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, e.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
36... Qf1+ 37. Kd2 Qxb5
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f1 keeps the pressure (+7.0).
- Well found: queen to b5 (+7.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kd2, then Qxb5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 36… Qf1+ — queen to f1 with check
- 37. Kd2 — king to d2
- Qxb5 — queen to b5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Skewer
A line attack forces the valuable piece to move, exposing the one behind it.
A skewer is a pin turned inside out: the valuable piece stands in front and something cheaper hides behind it. The big piece must step aside, and you collect the one that was sheltering in its shadow. Scan for the enemy king or queen sharing a file, rank or diagonal with another enemy piece. The deadliest version comes with check — the king moves, the rook behind it dies.
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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