Pin: queen to d7
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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 2150 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White 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 h1, queen e6, rook f1 g8, bishop h3, pawn a2 g2 h4 d5.
Black: king c8, queen d3, rook h7 d8, bishop e7, knight d7, pawn e5 h5 a6 d6 f6 b7.
9 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (26 against 31; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on c8.
It is White to move on move 28, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, e, f.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28. Qxd7+ Kb8 29. Rxd8+
Why it works
- Great move! queen to d7 keeps the pressure (+4.0).
- Well found: rook to d8 (+4.7).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kb8, then Rxd8+ and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 28. Qxd7+ — queen to d7 (capture) with check
- Kb8 — king to b8
- 29. Rxd8+ — rook to d8 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Royal fork
A fork with check: the king must move, and the second piece is lost.
A royal fork is a fork with check — one of the two targets is the king itself. The check must be answered first, so nobody is left to rescue the second piece. Look for squares where your piece gives check and simultaneously attacks an undefended queen or rook. It is the most reliable fork of all, because your opponent literally has no choice.
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.
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 015
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