Pin: bishop to e2
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The tactical motive
Pin: a piece can't move without exposing something more valuable behind it.
Difficulty 1827 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 e3, rook a1 f1, bishop d3, knight e2 e4, pawn b2 a3 g3 c4 d5.
Black: king g8, queen h3, rook a8 f8, bishop g4 e5, pawn a4 c5 g6 b7 c7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 23.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (33 against 31; 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 Black to move on move 23, with 50 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
23... Bxe2 24. Bxe2 Bd4 25. Qxd4 cxd4
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to e2 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: bishop to d4 (+4.7).
- Strong! pawn to d4 is the sharp choice (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Bxe2, then Bd4 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 23… Bxe2 — bishop to e2 (capture)
- 24. Bxe2 — bishop to e2 (capture)
- Bd4 — bishop to d4
- 25. Qxd4 — queen to d4 (capture)
- cxd4 — pawn to d4 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Remove the defender
Capture the guard first — then take what it protected.
Removing the defender is the straightforward plan: capture the guard first, then take what it guarded. Unlike deflection, the defender is not lured away — it is traded off or destroyed on the spot. Stare at the target you crave and ask who defends it, and whether that defender can be profitably eaten. Count the whole capture sequence, not just the first move — the trade must pay off at the end.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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