Mate in 3: queen to f3 (f6)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 2244 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third move.
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 c3, rook a1 f1, bishop a4, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h2 e3 d4.
Black: king g8, queen f6, rook b6 f8, bishop e4, pawn d5 a7 c7 f7 g7 h7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 17.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (29 against 28; 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 17, with 46 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: b, e.
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
17... Qf3 18. gxf3 Rg6+ 19. Kh1 Bxf3#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f3 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: rook to g6 (#1).
- Strong! bishop to f3 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead gxf3, then Rg6+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 17… Qf3 — queen to f3
- 18. gxf3 — pawn to f3 (capture)
- Rg6+ — rook to g6 with check
- 19. Kh1 — king to h1
- Bxf3# — bishop to f3 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
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.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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