Pin: queen to f6 (f3·2)
li-0LNMgnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2357 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.
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 f1, queen f3, rook a1 g1, bishop b2, knight e2, pawn f2 h2 b3 a4 e4.
Black: king g8, queen c2, rook c8 f8, bishop b4 d7, pawn e5 a6 e6 b7 f7 g7 h7.
11 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 20.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (30 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 f1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 20, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: g.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
20. Qf6 Qxe2+ 21. Kxe2
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f6 keeps the pressure (#8).
- Well found: king to e2 (#7).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxe2+, then Kxe2 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 20. Qf6 — queen to f6
- Qxe2+ — queen to e2 (capture) with check
- 21. Kxe2 — king to e2 (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?
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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