Pin: queen to g6 (h5)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2227 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 h5, rook a1 f1, bishop c1 b3, knight h2, pawn b2 c2 f2 g2 a3 d3 h3 e4.
Black: king g8, queen h4, rook a8 f8, bishop c5 c8, knight g6, pawn e5 a6 c6 d6 h6 b7 f7 g7.
15 white and 15 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 14.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 36 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 14, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 8 pawns, Black 8. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in.
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
14. Qxg6 d5 15. Nf3
Why it works
- Great move! queen to g6 keeps the pressure (+3.5).
- Well found: knight to f3 (+3.9).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead d5, then Nf3 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 14. Qxg6 — queen to g6 (capture)
- d5 — pawn to d5
- 15. Nf3 — knight to f3
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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