Pin: bishop to g7
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2083 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 g1, queen g3, rook f5, bishop c3, pawn a2 d2 g2 h2 e3 b4 c5.
Black: king g8, queen e7, rook f8, knight d3, pawn a3 e4 d5 c6 b7 g7 h7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 30.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 24 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 30, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
30. Bxg7 Qxg7 31. Rg5 Qxg5 32. Qxg5+
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to g7 keeps the pressure (+4.2).
- Well found: rook to g5 (+4.2).
- Strong! queen to g5 is the sharp choice (+4.7).
- You reach a winning position (+4.7).
- If instead Qxg7, then Rg5 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 30. Bxg7 — bishop to g7 (capture)
- Qxg7 — queen to g7 (capture)
- 31. Rg5 — rook to g5
- Qxg5 — queen to g5 (capture)
- 32. Qxg5+ — queen to g5 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Sacrifice attack
Give up material to unleash a decisive attack.
A sacrificial attack gives up material on purpose to rip the king's shelter open and launch a decisive assault. The sac is sound when you get concrete assets in return: open lines to the king, tempi, pieces ready to pour in. The signs: a poorly sheltered king, your forces aimed at its home, defenders stranded far away. The iron rule is to calculate, not hope — once the material is gone, there is no way back.
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.
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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