Mate in 2: knight to b4 (c6·2)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 2184 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
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.
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 d3, queen h5, rook f1, bishop e2, knight f5, pawn a2 b2 g2 c3 d4.
Black: king b8, queen g3, rook c8, bishop h8, knight c6, pawn e3 d5 e5 a7 b7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 25 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on d3, the black king on b8.
It is Black to move on move 27, with 33 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): f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c, g.
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
27... Nb4+ 28. cxb4 e4#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to b4 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: pawn to e4 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead cxb4, then e4# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 27… Nb4+ — knight to b4 with check
- 28. cxb4 — pawn to b4 (capture)
- e4# — pawn to e4 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Pawn mate
The humblest soldier delivers the final blow.
The pawn mate lets the humblest soldier land the final blow. It happens to a king stuck among its own and enemy pieces: the pawn strikes diagonally from one square away and there is nowhere left to run. The sign: the squares around the king are covered or occupied, and your pawn stands one step from striking distance. Never write pawns out of your attack — their blows are the cheapest and therefore the most humiliating.
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.
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 015
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