The pattern here is similar to the previous one but with an important difference. Again White’s queen pins Black’s, and again White can add a cross-pin by moving his rook onto the enemy queen's file: Re1-c1. Notice two things. First, White’s queen enjoys no protection; Black can play QxQ without worrying about having his queen recaptured. Second, the reason White is comfortable allowing this is that if Black plays QxQ he is threatened with worse than RxR; he is threatened with RxR# (mate). Since White’s other rook seals off the seventh rank, Black’s king has very little mobility and is vulnerable along the back rank. The basic idea of throwing another piece at the queen, and pinning it to a secondary target, is unchanged; but the power of the cross-pin is much greater here.

We saw earlier that a piece pinning the queen normally requires protection. This position shows an exception to the principle: if you can add a cross-pin against the queen it may become too costly for your opponent to use it to attack the piece inflicting the original pin.