Pin: rook to f8 (f1)
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1853 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 g1, queen c3, rook b1 f1, pawn a2 c2 g2 d3 g5 h6.
Black: king g8, queen e7, rook a7 f8, bishop e6, pawn a6 d6 g6 c7 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (25 against 27; 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 g8.
It is White to move on move 22, with 45 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
22. Rxf8+ Qxf8 23. Rb8 c5 24. Rxf8+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f8 keeps the pressure (+6.4).
- Well found: rook to b8 (+6.8).
- Strong! rook to f8 is the sharp choice (+6.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxf8, then Rb8 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 22. Rxf8+ — rook to f8 (capture) with check
- Qxf8 — queen to f8 (capture)
- 23. Rb8 — rook to b8
- c5 — pawn to c5
- 24. 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.
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.
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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