Pin: rook to d5 (d8)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1927 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 b1, rook d1 d5, knight c3 f3, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h2 e4.
Black: king e8, rook c8 d8, bishop g6 e7, pawn f6 h6 a7 f7 g7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (22 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on b1, the black king on e8.
It is Black to move on move 18, with 24 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, e.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18... Rxd5 19. Rxd5 Rxc3
Why it works
- Great move! rook to d5 keeps the pressure (+4.6).
- Well found: rook to c3 (+4.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxd5, then Rxc3 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 18… Rxd5 — rook to d5 (capture)
- 19. Rxd5 — rook to d5 (capture)
- Rxc3 — rook to c3 (capture)
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 014
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