Mate in 2: deflection on f3
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1859 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 f1, queen a6, rook a1 d1, bishop f3, pawn g2 c3 h3 a4.
Black: king g8, queen e3, rook f8, bishop e6, pawn e5 c7 g7 h7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 5 points of material (26 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 26, with 46 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, d, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a.
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
26... Rxf3+ 27. gxf3 Bxh3#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f3 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: bishop to h3 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead gxf3, then Bxh3# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 26… Rxf3+ — rook to f3 (capture) with check
- 27. gxf3 — pawn to f3 (capture)
- Bxh3# — bishop to h3 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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 013
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