Mate in 2: pawn to f5 (f7)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1841 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 g5, rook a2, pawn f4 h4.
Black: king g7, bishop b4, pawn a5 e6 g6 f7.
4 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 50.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 7 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g5, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 50, with 16 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 2 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: h.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
50... f5 51. h5 Be7#
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to f5 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: bishop to e7 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead h5, then Be7# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 50… f5 — pawn to f5
- 51. h5 — pawn to h5
- Be7# — bishop to e7 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Breakthrough
A pawn sacrifice tears the chain open and lets a passer through.
A breakthrough is a pawn sacrifice that rips the opponent's chain open and creates an unstoppable passer. Look for it where the pawns are locked against each other: often two pawns are given up so the third one slips through. Check the square rule — can the enemy king catch the new passer? If not, sacrifice with confidence; the classic error is breaking through while his king stands right there eating everything.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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