Pin: rook to b8
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2008 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 b1, queen c3, rook d1 h1, bishop e3, knight a2 f3, pawn c2 h2 d4 e4 g5.
Black: king g8, queen a3, rook a8 f8, bishop c8, knight a6, pawn c4 c6 e6 a7 f7 g7 h7.
12 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (33 against 32; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 18, with 28 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d.
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
18... Rb8+ 19. Ka1 Nb4 20. Qxb4 Rxb4
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b8 keeps the pressure (+5.7).
- Well found: knight to b4 (+5.9).
- Strong! rook to b4 is the sharp choice (+6.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Ka1, then Nb4 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 18… Rb8+ — rook to b8 with check
- 19. Ka1 — king to a1
- Nb4 — knight to b4
- 20. Qxb4 — queen to b4 (capture)
- Rxb4 — rook to b4 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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