Trap the knight on b7
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The tactical motive
Trapped piece: an enemy piece has no safe squares — catch it.
Difficulty 1999 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A trapped piece has no safe square. Spot an enemy piece that has wandered offside or been hemmed in, then play the move that takes away its last escape and wins it — often a quiet pawn push or a covering minor piece.
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 c2, rook c5, bishop c4, pawn a2 b3 f3 h3 g4 f5.
Black: king d8, rook b6, knight d6, pawn b4 h4 e5 g5 c6 f6.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 39.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 14 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on c2, the black king on d8.
It is Black to move on move 39, with 18 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a.
The Black king has 5 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
39... Nb7 40. Rxe5 fxe5
Why it works
- Great move! knight to b7 keeps the pressure (+5.3).
- Well found: pawn to e5 (+5.5).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxe5, then fxe5 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 39… Nb7 — knight to b7
- 40. Rxe5 — rook to e5 (capture)
- fxe5 — pawn to e5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
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?
Endgame tactic
Tactics live in the endgame too — strike while material is scarce.
Tactics do not retire when the queens come off: forks, pins and double attacks live on in the endgame. With so little material left, every tactical loss is almost always decisive. The signs are the usual ones — undefended pieces, king and piece on one line, a pawn about to promote. Even in a "technical" ending, scan for a shot before every move, both yours and your opponent's.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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