Pin: rook to d1 (e1)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1868 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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.
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 h1, queen b6, rook e1, bishop g4, pawn h3 c4 e4 a5.
Black: king b8, queen g7, rook b2, bishop b7, pawn b4 c5 e5 a6.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 21 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h1, the black king on b8.
It is White to move on move 38, with 32 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, f, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
38. Rd1 Qc7 39. Rd8+ Qxd8 40. Qxd8+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to d1 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: rook to d8 (+5.9).
- Strong! queen to d8 is the sharp choice (+5.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qc7, then Rd8+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 38. Rd1 — rook to d1
- Qc7 — queen to c7
- 39. Rd8+ — rook to d8 with check
- Qxd8 — queen to d8 (capture)
- 40. Qxd8+ — queen to d8 (capture) with check
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?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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