Pin: queen to h3 (d3)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2104 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 h1, queen d3, rook g1 h6, bishop d1, pawn f2 a3 b4 d4 e5.
Black: king g8, queen f4, rook c1 f8, bishop e6, pawn g4 d5 f5 b7 f7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 34.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 27 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 34, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: g.
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
34. Qh3 Qxh6 35. Qxh6
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h3 keeps the pressure (+4.8).
- Well found: queen to h6 (+5.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxh6, then Qxh6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 34. Qh3 — queen to h3
- Qxh6 — queen to h6 (capture)
- 35. Qxh6 — queen to h6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Queen fork
The queen lands on a square from which it attacks two targets at once.
The queen strikes along files, ranks and diagonals, so she forks more often than any other piece. Look for a square where the queen attacks two undefended targets at once — most often a check combined with a loose piece. Diagonal blows are especially venomous: a slanting check that also eyes a rook in the corner is the classic of the genre. Remember that both targets must be unprotected, or your «fork» is just a shot into the air.
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).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 015
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