Pin: king to g4
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2117 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A pin freezes a piece in front of a more valuable one behind it. Scan the ranks, files and diagonals your bishop, rook or queen controls: if an enemy piece cannot move without exposing its king or queen, it is pinned and can be piled on or bypassed.
Here the task is defensive: one of your pieces is under attack and must be rescued without losing more. Look for a move that saves it with tempo — a counter-check, an equal counter-attack or an interposition — rather than a passive retreat.
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 h4, queen f7, rook e8, pawn a2 b2 g2 h3.
Black: king h8, queen h6, rook f8, pawn c6 a7 b7 g7 h7.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 31.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 19; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h4, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 31, with 3 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. White are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
31. Kg4 Qg6+ 32. Qxg6 hxg6 33. Rxf8+
Why it works
- Great move! king to g4 keeps the pressure (+8.3).
- Well found: queen to g6 (+8.3).
- Strong! rook to f8 is the sharp choice (+8.3).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qg6+, then Qxg6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 31. Kg4 — king to g4
- Qg6+ — queen to g6 with check
- 32. Qxg6 — queen to g6 (capture)
- hxg6 — pawn to g6 (capture)
- 33. Rxf8+ — rook to f8 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
Save the piece
The attacked piece can be saved — with profit.
Saving the piece: one of your pieces is attacked, and the job is not to lose it for nothing. There are several tools: retreat with tempo, defend it, block the attack, or create a bigger counter-threat. Before retreating automatically, look for a retreat that attacks something — you save the piece and gain time in one move. The typical mistake is panicking onto the first available square, where the piece gets trapped again.
Simplification
Trade the heavy pieces and steer into a won endgame.
Simplification is how you convert an advantage: by trading queens and rooks you extinguish the counterplay and steer the game into a won endgame. The rule is simple — the side with extra material trades pieces but keeps pawns. Look for exchanges once the material is already won and your opponent is still rattling threats. The mistake is avoiding the queen trade and letting him muddy the water forever.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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