Mate in 2: pin on e7 (g5)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2292 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A discovered attack fires when one piece steps aside and unmasks the piece behind it. Look for your own units that block a rook, bishop or queen: moving the front piece — ideally with a threat of its own — springs two attacks in one move.
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 g4, rook f1, bishop e4 g5, pawn b2 g2 a3.
Black: king g8, queen h8, rook c7, bishop d5 e5, knight d4, pawn b6 e6 a7.
8 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (23 against 26; 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 g8.
It is White to move on move 26, with 44 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Be7+ Bg7 27. Rf8#
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to e7 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: rook to f8 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Bg7, then Rf8# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 26. Be7+ — bishop to e7 with check
- Bg7 — bishop to g7
- 27. Rf8# — rook to f8 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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