Mate in 1: pin on e6
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The tactical motive
Mate in 1: find the move after which the enemy king has no escape.
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1919 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A mate in one hides among forcing checks. Run through every check you can give: does it cover all the king's escape squares, is the checking piece safe or supported, and can nothing block or capture it? If yes, that is the mate.
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 e5, rook c1 d4, pawn a4 f4 g4 h4 d5.
Black: king d7, rook a5 b6, pawn g6 e7 f7 h7.
8 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 47.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (15 against 14; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on e5, the black king on d7.
It is Black to move on move 47, with 27 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a, d.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
47... Re6#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e6 keeps the pressure (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 1.
Move by move
- 47… Re6# — rook to e6 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Mate in 1
Checkmate in a single move — find it.
Mate in one: the combination is over, only the final precise shot remains. The method is simple — list every check you have and test the three escapes against each: king moves, blocks, and capturing the checker. If none of them works, it is mate. The classic blunder is falling in love with the first check you see and missing the one escape hatch.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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