Mate in 3: knight to d5 (c3·2)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1869 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White 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 d2, queen g4, rook f1 h1, bishop c6, knight c3, pawn a2 b2 c2 e3.
Black: king e7, queen c8, rook b8 h8, bishop g5, knight c5, pawn b5 e5 a6 d6 g6 h6 g7.
10 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 24.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (29 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 d2, the black king on e7.
It is White to move on move 24, with 63 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, g, h.
The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
24. Nd5+ Kd8 25. Qxg5+ hxg5 26. Rxh8#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to d5 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: queen to g5 (#1).
- Strong! rook to h8 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Kd8, then Qxg5+ and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 24. Nd5+ — knight to d5 with check
- Kd8 — king to d8
- 25. Qxg5+ — queen to g5 (capture) with check
- hxg5 — pawn to g5 (capture)
- 26. Rxh8# — rook to h8 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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