Pin: queen to f5
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 2029 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 g1, queen g4, rook f1 g3, bishop e4, pawn b2 f2 g2 h2 a3 d5.
Black: king g8, queen c1, rook c8 f8, bishop f6, pawn b5 e5 a6 d6 h6 f7 g7.
11 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 24.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (28 against 29; 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 24, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: e.
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
24. Qf5 Rfe8 25. Qxf6
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f5 keeps the pressure (+6.0).
- Well found: queen to f6 (+6.5).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Rfe8, then Qxf6 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 24. Qf5 — queen to f5
- Rfe8 — rook to e8
- 25. Qxf6 — queen to f6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
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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