Pin: knight to g6 (h4)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1864 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 h2, queen f4, rook g1, bishop b1, knight h4, pawn f2 d4 e5 h5.
Black: king h8, queen f8, rook c3, bishop b5 g5, pawn d5 a6 e6 h6 b7 f7.
9 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (24 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 h2, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 34 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, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: a, b.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
31. Ng6+ Kg8 32. Nxf8
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g6 keeps the pressure (+6.7).
- Well found: knight to f8 (+7.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kg8, then Nxf8 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 31. Ng6+ — knight to g6 with check
- Kg8 — king to g8
- 32. Nxf8 — knight to f8 (capture)
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.
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 014
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