Skewer: bishop to a4 (b3)
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The tactical motive
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 1856 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White 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 g1, queen f3, rook a1, bishop b3, knight c3, pawn a2 b2 c2 f2 g2 h2 d3.
Black: king g8, queen d7, rook e8, bishop d4, knight f6, pawn c5 d5 a7 b7 f7 g7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 27 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 19, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
19. Ba4 b5 20. Bxb5 Qb7 21. Bxe8
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to a4 keeps the pressure (+3.1).
- Well found: bishop to b5 (+3.3).
- Strong! bishop to e8 is the sharp choice (+3.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead b5, then Bxb5 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 19. Ba4 — bishop to a4
- b5 — pawn to b5
- 20. Bxb5 — bishop to b5 (capture)
- Qb7 — queen to b7
- 21. Bxe8 — bishop to e8 (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.
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?
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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