Mate in 3: queen to h5 (g6)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1995 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
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 h3, queen f3, rook a1 f1, bishop c4, knight c3 f5, pawn a2 b2 c2 f2 e4.
Black: king g8, queen g6, rook a8 f8, bishop e7, knight g4, pawn d6 a7 b7 c7 f7 g7 h7.
12 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 16.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (33 against 32; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 16, with 34 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: e.
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
16... Qh5+ 17. Kg3 Qh2+ 18. Kxg4 h5#
Why it works
- Great move! queen to h5 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: queen to h2 (#1).
- Strong! pawn to h5 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Kg3, then Qh2+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 16… Qh5+ — queen to h5 with check
- 17. Kg3 — king to g3
- Qh2+ — queen to h2 with check
- 18. Kxg4 — king to g4 (capture)
- h5# — pawn to h5 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Pawn mate
The humblest soldier delivers the final blow.
The pawn mate lets the humblest soldier land the final blow. It happens to a king stuck among its own and enemy pieces: the pawn strikes diagonally from one square away and there is nowhere left to run. The sign: the squares around the king are covered or occupied, and your pawn stands one step from striking distance. Never write pawns out of your attack — their blows are the cheapest and therefore the most humiliating.
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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