Mate in 3: queen to f1 (g1)
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1986 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A hanging piece is one that is attacked and not defended, or defended too few times. Count attackers against defenders on each enemy unit; where attackers win, take it — often with an in-between move or a check to gain the extra tempo.
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third move.
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 c1, queen a7, bishop f1 f4, knight d4 c5, pawn a2 b2 c3.
Black: king c8, queen g1, bishop e8, knight f2 g8, pawn d5 c6 b7 g7.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (24 against 22; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on c8.
It is Black to move on move 27, with 26 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 3 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a.
White 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
27... Qxf1+ 28. Kd2 Qd1+ 29. Ke3 Ng4#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f1 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: queen to d1 (#1).
- Strong! knight to g4 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Kd2, then Qd1+ and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 27… Qxf1+ — queen to f1 (capture) with check
- 28. Kd2 — king to d2
- Qd1+ — queen to d1 with check
- 29. Ke3 — king to e3
- Ng4# — knight to g4 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Knight mate
The knight lands the killing blow from its unique angle.
In a knight mate the final blow comes from the knight — the only piece whose check can never be blocked. That makes it lethal against a cramped king: only a king move or capturing the knight itself can help. The sign: the squares around the king are occupied or covered, and there is a hop from which the knight checks while staying untouchable. Bring the knight over early — it is slower than the long-range pieces, but its strike cannot be parried.
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.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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