Pin: pawn to f6
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1892 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 g4, rook a1 f1, bishop c1 c2, knight d3 e5, pawn g2 h2 b3 e3 a4 d4 f5.
Black: king g8, queen c7, rook c8 f8, bishop a6 e7, knight d2 a5, pawn c3 b4 d5 e6 h6 f7 g7.
15 white and 15 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 23.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 38 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 23, with 45 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: c.
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
23. f6 Bxf6 24. Rxf6 Bxd3 25. Bxd3
Why it works
- Best move. pawn to f6 is exactly what the engine plays (+1.8).
- A brilliant blow: rook to f6, and you stand better (+2.6).
- Strong! bishop to d3 is the sharp choice (+2.5).
- You reach a winning position (+2.5).
- If instead Bxf6, then Rxf6 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 23. f6 — pawn to f6
- Bxf6 — bishop to f6 (capture)
- 24. Rxf6 — rook to f6 (capture)
- Bxd3 — bishop to d3 (capture)
- 25. Bxd3 — bishop to d3 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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.
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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