Pin: king to f7
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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 1815 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 g1, queen e5, knight f1, pawn g2 d4.
Black: king f6, rook c1, knight e3, pawn e4 f5 e6 g7 h7.
5 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (14 against 13; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on f6.
It is Black to move on move 38, with 4 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 2 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
38... Kf7 39. Qb8 Rxf1+
Why it works
- Best move. king to f7 is exactly what the engine plays (+1.9).
- Well found: rook to f1 (+3.2).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead Qb8, then Rxf1+ and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 38… Kf7 — king to f7
- 39. Qb8 — queen to b8
- Rxf1+ — rook to f1 (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.
Queen endgame
Queens on an open board — precision above all.
Queen endgames are treacherous: the queen reaches everywhere, and one slip turns a win into perpetual check. The signs are few pawns, exposed kings, and checks hanging in the air. Tuck your king away early, and use your own checks to bring the queen closer or push your passer with tempo. The typical mistake is grabbing pawns while leaving your king exposed to endless checks.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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