Winning blow: rook to f7 (f4·3)
c9-18495naming tag (square·N)The tactical motive
Chess960 twist: use the unusual starting setup of the pieces.
Winning tactic: there is a move that gains a decisive advantage — find it.
Difficulty 1010 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
White to move — find the best continuation
Position on the board
White: king g1, queen c1, rook f4, bishop a1 d1, knight f1, pawn a2 f2 g2 c4 h4 g7.
Black: king g8, queen c8, rook e1 d6, bishop b6, pawn h5 a7 f7.
12 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 17.
Solution & explanation
Main line
17. Rxf7 Rdxd1 18. Rf8+ Qxf8 19. gxf8=Q+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f7 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: rook to f8 (+4.4).
- Precise: pawn to f8 is the top choice (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rdxd1, then Rf8+ and you stay on top.
Types in this puzzle
Winning blow
Find the strike that wins material by force.
A winning blow is a forced material gain that does not fit a single textbook motif. The general tactical recipe applies: spot loose pieces, an awkwardly placed king, overloaded lines. Go through the forcing moves in order of violence — checks, captures, threats — because most combinations start with one of them. Do not judge by feel: calculate the concrete line until the outcome is beyond doubt.
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.
About this position
These pieces come from starting position #113.
SP-113 · RampartGuard — A wing king (b/g) with no knight on the a- or h-file.
The king starts on g1, the rooks on e1 and h1, the queen on c1.
The king already stands on its castled square, so castling short moves only the rook, from h1 to f1.
A bishop starts in the corner on a1: it has a single diagonal, which the b-pawn unlocks, running out to h8.
One second-rank pawn starts with no defender at all: a2.
The setup belongs to the RampartGuard family; read right to left it becomes position 843.
The engine's main line opens with d4, putting a pawn straight into the centre.
Morozov Balance Index: 16 of 100 — class D — largest edge. Engine evaluation of the starting position: +39 centipawns for White (depth 43, 400 000 000 nodes).
Explore position #113Provenance
Mined from the project's engine self-play games.
Pack 006 · SP-113
Similar puzzles
Free, no ads · Android 8.0+ · coming soon to Google Play