Pin: rook to e3 (e8)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1868 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 d2, rook c1 e1, bishop e2 e3, pawn g2 h2 a3 f3 b4 c5 d5.
Black: king g8, queen b2, rook a8 e8, bishop g7, knight f7, pawn f5 d6 g6 a7 b7 c7 h7.
13 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 20.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 32 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 Black to move on move 20, with 49 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.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
20... Rxe3 21. Qxe3 Bd4 22. Qxd4 Qxd4+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e3 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: bishop to d4 (+4.5).
- Strong! queen to d4 is the sharp choice (+4.6).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxe3, then Bd4 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 20… Rxe3 — rook to e3 (capture)
- 21. Qxe3 — queen to e3 (capture)
- Bd4 — bishop to d4
- 22. Qxd4 — queen to d4 (capture)
- Qxd4+ — queen to d4 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Sacrifice attack
Give up material to unleash a decisive attack.
A sacrificial attack gives up material on purpose to rip the king's shelter open and launch a decisive assault. The sac is sound when you get concrete assets in return: open lines to the king, tempi, pieces ready to pour in. The signs: a poorly sheltered king, your forces aimed at its home, defenders stranded far away. The iron rule is to calculate, not hope — once the material is gone, there is no way back.
Remove the defender
Capture the guard first — then take what it protected.
Removing the defender is the straightforward plan: capture the guard first, then take what it guarded. Unlike deflection, the defender is not lured away — it is traded off or destroyed on the spot. Stare at the target you crave and ask who defends it, and whether that defender can be profitably eaten. Count the whole capture sequence, not just the first move — the trade must pay off at the end.
Decoy
A sacrifice lures the king or a piece onto a fatal square.
A decoy is the mirror image of deflection: you sacrifice to drag the king or a piece onto a fatal square. The classic is a queen or rook sac whose capture pulls the king into a knight fork, a discovered check or mate. Find the square where the target will be hit, then find the offer it cannot refuse. Calculate to the very end — a decoy only works when the follow-up is forced.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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