Pin: rook to c6
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1563 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 b3, rook c1, bishop a6, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 e4.
Black: king b8, queen d2, rook c8 h8, bishop c6, pawn d4 e5 h6 a7 b7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (22 against 27; 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 b8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 44 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, h.
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
31. Rxc6 Qc1+ 32. Rxc1
Why it works
- Great move! rook to c6 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: rook to c1 (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qc1+, then Rxc1 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 31. Rxc6 — rook to c6 (capture)
- Qc1+ — queen to c1 with check
- 32. Rxc1 — rook to c1 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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 011
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