Pin: queen to h4
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2575 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black 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 h1, queen a6, rook f1 f2, pawn g2 a3 b4.
Black: king h8, queen g4, rook c2 e8, pawn h6 g7.
7 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (22 against 21; 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 h8.
It is Black to move on move 38, with 49 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a, b.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
38... Qh4+ 39. Kg1 Qd4 40. Qd6 Qxd6
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h4 keeps the pressure (+4.5).
- Well found: queen to d4 (+4.7).
- Strong! queen to d6 is the sharp choice (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kg1, then Qd4 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 38… Qh4+ — queen to h4 with check
- 39. Kg1 — king to g1
- Qd4 — queen to d4
- 40. Qd6 — queen to d6
- Qxd6 — queen to d6 (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.
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).
Pack 015
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