Deflection: rook to f4
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1806 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 g1, queen d3, rook c2, bishop b2 f3, pawn f2 f4 h4 a5 b5 d5.
Black: king g8, queen h3, rook f6 f8, pawn e5 d6 g6 a7 b7 h7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (26 against 25; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 28, with 32 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 — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28... Rxf4 29. Be2 Rg4+ 30. Bxg4 Qxd3
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f4 keeps the pressure (+5.3).
- Well found: rook to g4 (+5.5).
- Strong! queen to d3 is the sharp choice (+5.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Be2, then Rg4+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 28… Rxf4 — rook to f4 (capture)
- 29. Be2 — bishop to e2
- Rg4+ — rook to g4 with check
- 30. Bxg4 — bishop to g4 (capture)
- Qxd3 — queen to d3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Deflection
Force the defender away from its duty — then strike what it guarded.
Deflection forces the guard to leave its post: a sacrifice or exchange drags it away from the piece or square it protects. First find the critical defender — the piece whose absence makes the mate or the material win possible. Then find the move it cannot ignore, which is usually a capture. Do not be stingy: if removing the guard wins the queen or mates, the sacrifice pays for itself many times over.
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 013
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