Deflection: pawn to h2
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1800 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.
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 f2, rook a1 e1, bishop c1 f5, knight a4, pawn a2 g2 e3 f3 d4 c6 b7.
Black: king b8, queen g3, rook d8 h8, bishop d6, knight f8, pawn h3 d5 g5 a7 f7.
14 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 5 points of material (35 against 30; 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 b8.
It is Black to move on move 25, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 5. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: b, c, e.
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
25... h2+ 26. Kh1 Qxf2
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to h2 keeps the pressure (+2.5).
- Well found: queen to f2 (+2.4).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kh1, then Qxf2 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 25… h2+ — pawn to h2 with check
- 26. Kh1 — king to h1
- Qxf2 — queen to f2 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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