Pin: queen to c5
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1958 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 e2, rook a1 d4, bishop g2, pawn a2 h2 b3 g3 e4 f4.
Black: king g8, queen e7, rook c7 f8, knight e5, pawn b6 e6 a7 f7 g7 h7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 28 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 22, with 41 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
22... Qc5 23. Rd1 Nc6 24. Qc4 Nxd4
Why it works
- Great move! queen to c5 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: knight to c6 (+4.7).
- Strong! knight to d4 is the sharp choice (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rd1, then Nc6 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 22… Qc5 — queen to c5
- 23. Rd1 — rook to d1
- Nc6 — knight to c6
- 24. Qc4 — queen to c4
- Nxd4 — knight to d4 (capture)
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.
Trapped piece
The attacked piece has no safe square — it is caught.
Trapping a piece means the attacked piece has no safe square left — it simply perishes. Do not chase it around; build a cage instead: cut off the escape squares with pawns and pieces first, and attack last. The typical victim has wandered deep into your camp or is stuck at the edge of the board, where its mobility is tiny. And always check the way home for your own raiders — or the trapped piece will be yours.
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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