Fork: bishop to d5 (g2)
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Fork: one piece attacks two targets at once — they can't both be saved.
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 1956 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
A fork is one piece attacking two targets at once. Look for a knight, pawn or queen move that lands where it hits the king (or a bigger piece) and a second undefended unit on the same turn — the opponent can save only one.
A hanging piece is one that is attacked and not defended, or defended too few times. Count attackers against defenders on each enemy unit; where attackers win, take it — often with an in-between move or a check to gain the extra tempo.
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 b7, rook a1, bishop g2, knight d2 e5, pawn b2 c3 d3 g3 a4.
Black: king g8, queen g5, rook a8 f8, bishop d5, knight c6, pawn d4 a7 c7 g7 h7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 21.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (28 against 30; 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 White to move on move 21, with 45 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: h.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
21. Bxd5+ Kh8 22. Nf7+ Rxf7 23. Qxa8+
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to d5 keeps the pressure (+6.5).
- Well found: knight to f7 (+6.9).
- Strong! queen to a8 is the sharp choice (+6.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kh8, then Nf7+ and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 21. Bxd5+ — bishop to d5 (capture) with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 22. Nf7+ — knight to f7 with check
- Rxf7 — rook to f7 (capture)
- 23. Qxa8+ — queen to a8 (capture) with check
Types in this puzzle
Deflection
Force the defender away from its duty — then strike what it guarded.
Deflection forces the guard to leave its post: a sacrifice or exchange drags it away from the piece or square it protects. First find the critical defender — the piece whose absence makes the mate or the material win possible. Then find the move it cannot ignore, which is usually a capture. Do not be stingy: if removing the guard wins the queen or mates, the sacrifice pays for itself many times over.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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