Mate in 3: bishop to f2 (c5)
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The tactical motive
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1855 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third move.
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 g5, rook a1 f1, bishop c1 c6, pawn b2 c2 f2 h2 a3 d3 e4.
Black: king f8, queen f3, rook h8, bishop h3 c5, pawn b5 e5 a6 d6 c7 f7 g7 h7.
13 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 16.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 4 points of material (32 against 28; 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 f8.
It is Black to move on move 16, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 8. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
16... Bxf2+ 17. Rxf2 Qd1+ 18. Rf1 Qxf1#
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f2 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: queen to d1 (#1).
- Strong! queen to f1 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Rxf2, then Qd1+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 16… Bxf2+ — bishop to f2 (capture) with check
- 17. Rxf2 — rook to f2 (capture)
- Qd1+ — queen to d1 with check
- 18. Rf1 — rook to f1
- Qxf1# — queen to f1 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Supported queen mate
The queen delivers mate face to face, protected by a friend.
The supported queen mate is the most common pattern of all: the queen lands next to the king and mates because a friendly piece or pawn protects her. The king is helpless — capturing is impossible, and the queen covers every neighboring square herself. Hunt for a protected square beside the enemy king: a knight, bishop or pawn eyeing it turns her invasion into mate. Verify one thing — that the square really is defended, or the king eats her.
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.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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