Pin: knight to h2
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2427 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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.
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 g4, queen f5, rook a8, bishop d2 e2, knight b3, pawn c3 d4 b6.
Black: king c8, queen d7, rook h8, knight f1 b8, pawn d5 c6 f6 b7.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (26 against 24; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g4, the black king on c8.
It is Black to move on move 27, with 19 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, e, g, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
27... Nh2+ 28. Kf4 Rh4+ 29. Kg3 Qxf5
Why it works
- Great move! knight to h2 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: rook to h4 (+4.9).
- Strong! queen to f5 is the sharp choice (+5.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kf4, then Rh4+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 27… Nh2+ — knight to h2 with check
- 28. Kf4 — king to f4
- Rh4+ — rook to h4 with check
- 29. Kg3 — king to g3
- Qxf5 — queen to f5 (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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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