Trap the rook on f8
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The tactical motive
Trapped piece: an enemy piece has no safe squares — catch it.
Difficulty 1725 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A trapped piece has no safe square. Spot an enemy piece that has wandered offside or been hemmed in, then play the move that takes away its last escape and wins it — often a quiet pawn push or a covering minor piece.
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 f3, rook e1 f1, bishop e3, knight c4, pawn c2 f2 g2 b3 d3 h3 a4.
Black: king g8, queen c7, rook g6 d8, bishop e7, knight c3, pawn c5 e6 a7 b7 g7 h7.
13 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (32 against 31; 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 22, with 48 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: d, f.
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
22... Rf8 23. Qh5 Rf5 24. Qxg6 hxg6
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f8 keeps the pressure (+3.1).
- Well found: rook to f5 (+3.4).
- Strong! pawn to g6 is the sharp choice (+3.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qh5, then Rf5 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 22… Rf8 — rook to f8
- 23. Qh5 — queen to h5
- Rf5 — rook to f5
- 24. Qxg6 — queen to g6 (capture)
- hxg6 — pawn to g6 (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?
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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