Pin: queen to d3
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1885 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 b1, rook b6, pawn f2 f3 g3 h3.
Black: king d6, queen c6, bishop c3, knight e6, pawn d2 e5 a6 f6 g7.
7 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 40.
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 d6.
It is White to move on move 40, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: a, 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
40. Qd3+ Bd4 41. Rxc6+
Why it works
- Great move! queen to d3 keeps the pressure (+3.7).
- Well found: rook to c6 (+3.7).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Bd4, then Rxc6+ and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 40. Qd3+ — queen to d3 with check
- Bd4 — bishop to d4
- 41. Rxc6+ — rook to c6 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
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.
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.
Check chase
Every move is a check — the king is chased into losing ground.
In a check chase every one of your moves is a check, so the opponent never gets a free second. The king is herded across the board until it loses a piece or walks into a decisive blow. Such lines are the easiest to calculate: each check allows only a handful of replies, so try them all. Make it a habit to start calculating any sharp position with the checks — they are the most forcing moves on the board.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 014
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