Win the hanging king on a7
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1126 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
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.
Here the task is defensive: one of your pieces is under attack and must be rescued without losing more. Look for a move that saves it with tempo — a counter-check, an equal counter-attack or an interposition — rather than a passive retreat.
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 c1, queen h5, rook a7, knight d8, pawn c2 d4 g4 e5.
Black: king a6, queen c3, rook f8, pawn c4 a5 d5 f5 b6.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 38.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (21 against 19; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on a6.
It is Black to move on move 38, with 2 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: e, g.
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
38... Kxa7 39. Qh7+ Ka6
Why it works
- Best move. king to a7 is exactly what the engine plays (+1.8).
- Well found: king to a6 (+3.3).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Qh7+, then Ka6 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 38… Kxa7 — king to a7 (capture)
- 39. Qh7+ — queen to h7 with check
- Ka6 — king to a6
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.
Save the piece
The attacked piece can be saved — with profit.
Saving the piece: one of your pieces is attacked, and the job is not to lose it for nothing. There are several tools: retreat with tempo, defend it, block the attack, or create a bigger counter-threat. Before retreating automatically, look for a retreat that attacks something — you save the piece and gain time in one move. The typical mistake is panicking onto the first available square, where the piece gets trapped again.
King evacuation
The king walks out of the danger zone on its own feet.
King evacuation: when the shelter collapses, the king walks out of the attack on his own feet — sometimes across half the board. A series of precise king moves carries him out of the firing zone, and the enemy attack dissolves. The signs: no direct defense works, but there is a route over unattacked squares to a quiet corner. Calculate the entire journey in advance — a king stranded halfway usually dies there.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 007
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