Pin: rook to b4
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2203 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 f1, queen a7, rook e1, bishop e2, pawn a2.
Black: king g7, queen g3, rook b8, pawn e6 g6 f7.
5 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 17; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f1, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 31, with 41 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 1 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c, d, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a.
The Black king has 6 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
31... Rb4 32. Qf2 Rf4 33. Qxf4 Qxf4+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b4 keeps the pressure (+5.0).
- Well found: rook to f4 (+5.0).
- Strong! queen to f4 is the sharp choice (+5.1).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qf2, then Rf4 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 31… Rb4 — rook to b4
- 32. Qf2 — queen to f2
- Rf4 — rook to f4
- 33. Qxf4 — queen to f4 (capture)
- Qxf4+ — queen to f4 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
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 015
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