A pin is an attack on a piece that cannot move without exposing a more valuable piece behind it. The pinned piece is frozen, and a frozen piece can be attacked again, won, or simply ignored as a defender. Every puzzle on this page involves a pin, comes from a real game and is matched to your puzzle rating.
When the piece behind is the king, the pin is absolute: the pinned piece is not allowed to move off the line at all, because that would leave its own king in check. When the piece behind is anything else, usually the queen or a rook, the pin is relative. The pinned piece can legally move, but moving it gives up whatever stands behind.
Only bishops, rooks and queens can pin, because a pin works along a line. Knights, pawns and kings cannot.
The simplest way is to attack the pinned piece again, ideally with a pawn. It cannot run, so it falls unless it can be defended enough times. Piling up on it with more pieces works for the same reason.
A pinned piece is also a poor defender. A piece pinned to its king cannot capture off the line, so the squares and pieces it seems to protect may in fact be loose. Many pin puzzles are really about that: the winning move lands on a square that looks defended by a piece that is not free to take.
A relative pin is only as strong as what the pinned piece can do when it moves. Legal's mate is the classic warning. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bc4 Bg4 4.Nc3 g6, Black's bishop pins the knight on f3 to the queen. White plays 5.Nxe5 anyway, and if Black takes the queen with 5...Bxd1, then 6.Bxf7+ Ke7 7.Nd5 is checkmate. The knight left the pin because what it gained was worth more than the queen.
The defending side has other ways out too: moving the piece behind the pin, putting another piece in the way, attacking the pinning piece, or setting up a counter-pin. Before you rely on a pin, check each of these.
The first is treating a relative pin as if it were absolute and being surprised when the piece moves with a threat. The second is pinning a piece and then waiting, which gives the opponent time to unpin. The third is forgetting your own pinned pieces: a piece pinned to your king still gives check to the enemy king, but it cannot leave the line to defend.
Before moving, look along every open line from your bishops, rooks and queen to the enemy king and queen. Any single piece standing on that line is a pin candidate. In the puzzles, if you are stuck, the first hint shows which piece to move; after you solve, the full line appears beside the board.
Pins and skewers are two sides of the same idea, so train them together. For fork patterns that often follow a pin, see fork puzzles.
Pattern Drill checks your own games for pins you missed and pins you found. Elo Maxing rates you on every tactical motif and serves the weakest next. For mixed tactics at your level, use Puzzle Training; for speed, Puzzle Storm; and for repetition of a fixed set, the Woodpecker Method. To learn from the tactics you miss in your own games, read how to learn from your chess mistakes.
An attack on a piece that cannot move without exposing a more valuable piece, or its own king, standing behind it on the same line.
In a pin the less valuable piece is in front. In a skewer the more valuable piece is in front, and when it moves the piece behind is lost.
Bishops, rooks and queens, because a pin works along a line. Knights, pawns and kings cannot pin.
Yes. A piece pinned to its own king still gives check to the enemy king, even though it cannot move off the line.