Deflection: king to e7
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1827 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
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 e6, bishop f1, pawn b3 a4 e5 d6.
Black: king c8, rook f4, pawn h4 b6 f6 g7.
6 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 51.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (7 against 9; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on e6, the black king on c8.
It is White to move on move 51, with 14 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: f, g, h.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
51. Ke7 Rxf1 52. d7+ Kb7 53. d8=Q
Why it works
- Great move! king to e7 keeps the pressure (+4.6).
- Well found: pawn to d7 (+5.7).
- Strong! pawn to d8 is the sharp choice (+6.2).
- You win decisive material (+6.2).
- If instead Rxf1, then d7+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 51. Ke7 — king to e7
- Rxf1 — rook to f1 (capture)
- 52. d7+ — pawn to d7 with check
- Kb7 — king to b7
- 53. d8=Q — pawn to d8
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.
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.
Promotion race
Both sides push passers — win the race by a tempo.
A promotion race is a sprint between two passed pawns: both sides push toward the last rank, and victory goes to whoever queens first or queens with check. You will recognize it when both players have far-advanced passers that neither king can catch. Count the tempi literally, move by move, all the way to promotion. The classic mistake is spending a tempo on a "useful" move — in a race, almost any non-pawn move loses.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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