Deflection: bishop to h7
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 1885 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 h1, queen h6, rook f1, bishop g6, knight g3, pawn g2 h2 a3.
Black: king g8, queen g7, rook c7 f8, knight c3, pawn a6 b7.
8 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (23 against 24; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 41 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
31. Bh7+ Kh8 32. Rxf8+ Qxf8 33. Qxf8+
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h7 keeps the pressure (+6.8).
- Well found: rook to f8 (+7.4).
- Strong! queen to f8 is the sharp choice (+7.4).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kh8, then Rxf8+ and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 31. Bh7+ — bishop to h7 with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 32. Rxf8+ — rook to f8 (capture) with check
- Qxf8 — queen to f8 (capture)
- 33. Qxf8+ — queen to f8 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
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.
Check chase
Every move is a check — the king is chased into losing ground.
In a check chase every one of your moves is a check, so the opponent never gets a free second. The king is herded across the board until it loses a piece or walks into a decisive blow. Such lines are the easiest to calculate: each check allows only a handful of replies, so try them all. Make it a habit to start calculating any sharp position with the checks — they are the most forcing moves on the board.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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