Mate in 1: pin on h8
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The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1700 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
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 b1, queen h7, rook g1 h1, bishop h6, knight d5, pawn a2 c2 b3 g4.
Black: king f8, queen d4, rook a8 e8, bishop d7 g7, knight e4, pawn b5 a6 d6 g6 e7 f7.
10 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (29 against 34; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on b1, the black king on f8.
It is White to move on move 26, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, e, f.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Qh8#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h8 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 26. Qh8# — queen to h8 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Back-rank mate
The king is locked behind its own pawns — a heavy piece strikes the last rank.
The back-rank mate strikes a king locked behind its own unmoved pawns when a rook or queen crashes onto the last rank. The signs: no escape hole in front of the king, and the back rank guarded by a single piece or by nobody at all. Often that lone guard is deflected or traded off first, and only then comes the invasion. In your own games, make luft in time — one pawn move prevents a sudden catastrophe.
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.
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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