Rescue the pawn to h6
li-00J5rOpens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2112 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
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 e3, rook d1 h6, knight c3, pawn a2 b2 c2 f3 e4 g6.
Black: king g8, queen a5, rook a8 f8, knight e6, pawn e5 a6 c6 b7 g7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 21.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (28 against 27; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 21, with 35 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f.
The Black king has 0 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
21... gxh6 22. Qxh6 Qc7
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to h6 keeps the pressure (+2.7).
- Well found: queen to c7 (+2.7).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Qxh6, then Qc7 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 21… gxh6 — pawn to h6 (capture)
- 22. Qxh6 — queen to h6 (capture)
- Qc7 — queen to c7
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 015
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