Rescue the bishop to f2
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1653 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White 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 g1, queen c2, rook d1 f1, bishop d3 g3, pawn a2 g2 h2 c3 f3 e4.
Black: king g8, queen c5, rook b8 f8, bishop g4, knight f4, pawn e5 g5 c6 h6 a7 f7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 31 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 19, with 4 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. White are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
19. Bf2 Qa3 20. fxg4 Rb2 21. Qc1
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f2 keeps the pressure (+2.8).
- Well found: pawn to g4 (+3.1).
- Strong! queen to c1 is the sharp choice (+3.1).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Qa3, then fxg4 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 19. Bf2 — bishop to f2
- Qa3 — queen to a3
- 20. fxg4 — pawn to g4 (capture)
- Rb2 — rook to b2
- 21. Qc1 — queen to c1
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.
Blocking save
Block the check with tempo — and turn the game around.
The blocking save: you interpose a piece against the check — not passively, but with tempo, so the blocker creates a threat of its own. Such a block turns defense into attack. Whenever you are checked, compare all three replies — capture, move the king, interpose — and among the interpositions hunt for the one that counterattacks. The mistake is automatically stepping aside with the king when an active block would have turned the game around.
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 013
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