Pin: queen to h3 (h8)
li-0Fsxbnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2251 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 g1, queen d6, rook c1 d5, pawn f2 g2 h2 e3 b4.
Black: king g7, queen h8, rook g5, bishop f5, pawn c4 e4 b5 a6 f6 f7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 42.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (24 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 42, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: g, h.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
42... Qh3 43. Qg3 Rxg3
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h3 keeps the pressure (+4.1).
- Well found: rook to g3 (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qg3, then Rxg3 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 42… Qh3 — queen to h3
- 43. Qg3 — queen to g3
- Rxg3 — rook to g3 (capture)
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?
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
Similar puzzles
In your browser or in the Android app. Nothing to install · Free, no ads