Pin: rook to d5 (d4)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2459 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White 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 f6, rook d4, pawn f2 h3 a4 g4.
Black: king g8, queen h7, rook c8, pawn d3 e4 b5 g5 h5 f7.
7 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (18 against 20; 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 White to move on move 37, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, d, e.
The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37. Rd5 Qg6 38. Rxg5 Qxg5 39. Qxg5+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to d5 keeps the pressure (+4.5).
- Well found: rook to g5 (+5.1).
- Strong! queen to g5 is the sharp choice (+5.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qg6, then Rxg5 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 37. Rd5 — rook to d5
- Qg6 — queen to g6
- 38. Rxg5 — rook to g5 (capture)
- Qxg5 — queen to g5 (capture)
- 39. Qxg5+ — queen to g5 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
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?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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