Skewer: king to g8
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The tactical motive
Skewer: a valuable piece is forced to move, exposing the one behind it.
Difficulty 2247 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A skewer is a pin reversed — the valuable piece stands in front and, when it moves, the piece behind falls. Line your rook, bishop or queen up against the king or queen and win whatever is hiding behind it.
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 h6, rook h5, pawn b4.
Black: king f7, rook g7, pawn h2.
3 white and 3 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 51.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 6 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h6, the black king on f7.
It is Black to move on move 51, with 18 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 1 pawns, Black 1. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, c, d, e, f, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b.
The Black king has 6 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
51... Kg8 52. Rxh2 Rh7+ 53. Kg6 Rxh2
Why it works
- Great move! king to g8 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: rook to h7 (+4.5).
- Strong! rook to h2 is the sharp choice (+4.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxh2, then Rh7+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 51… Kg8 — king to g8
- 52. Rxh2 — rook to h2 (capture)
- Rh7+ — rook to h7 with check
- 53. Kg6 — king to g6
- Rxh2 — rook to h2 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Skewer
A line attack forces the valuable piece to move, exposing the one behind it.
A skewer is a pin turned inside out: the valuable piece stands in front and something cheaper hides behind it. The big piece must step aside, and you collect the one that was sheltering in its shadow. Scan for the enemy king or queen sharing a file, rank or diagonal with another enemy piece. The deadliest version comes with check — the king moves, the rook behind it dies.
Rook endgame
The most common endgame — activity decides everything.
The rook endgame is the most common of all: rooks and pawns on the board. Its first law is activity — a rook behind a passed pawn beats a rook passively babysitting one. The sign of a correct plan is that your rook is attacking something, not guarding something. The typical error is locking your rook into defense: it is often better to give up a pawn and keep your rook and king active.
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 015
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