Pin: rook to g4
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1801 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 g2, rook g3, pawn a4 d4 f4 g4 b5.
Black: king f6, rook h4, pawn c3 a5 d5 b6 e6.
7 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 43.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 10 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g2, the black king on f6.
It is Black to move on move 43, with 14 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f, g.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
43... Rxg4 44. Rxg4 c2 45. Kf3 c1=Q
Why it works
- Great move! rook to g4 keeps the pressure (+6.3).
- Well found: pawn to c2 (+6.4).
- Strong! pawn to c1 is the sharp choice (+6.6).
- You win a piece — the pawn.
- If instead Rxg4, then c2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 43… Rxg4 — rook to g4 (capture)
- 44. Rxg4 — rook to g4 (capture)
- c2 — pawn to c2
- 45. Kf3 — king to f3
- c1=Q — pawn to c1
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.
Promotion race
Both sides push passers — win the race by a tempo.
A promotion race is a sprint between two passed pawns: both sides push toward the last rank, and victory goes to whoever queens first or queens with check. You will recognize it when both players have far-advanced passers that neither king can catch. Count the tempi literally, move by move, all the way to promotion. The classic mistake is spending a tempo on a "useful" move — in a race, almost any non-pawn move loses.
Promotion
The pawn reaches the last rank and becomes a queen — decisively.
Promotion turns a pawn on the last rank into a queen and rewrites the evaluation on the spot. In tactics the passer rarely walks in for free — usually a sacrifice clears its path. Count the tempi: how many moves does the pawn need, and can the defender stop it in time? And watch the promotion square itself — it must be out of enemy reach or won by force in your combination.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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