Win the hanging rook on b2
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 2280 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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.
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 f4, rook f1, bishop b2 g2, knight c3, pawn h2 a3 f3 g3 d4 c5.
Black: king g8, queen e8, rook b8, bishop f5 a7, knight c4, pawn d5 a6 f6 c7 f7 h7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 29 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 Black to move on move 25, with 50 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: g.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25... Rxb2 26. Qxf5 Rxg2+
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b2 keeps the pressure (+3.2).
- Well found: rook to g2 (+3.3).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Qxf5, then Rxg2+ and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 25… Rxb2 — rook to b2 (capture)
- 26. Qxf5 — queen to f5 (capture)
- Rxg2+ — rook to g2 (capture) with check
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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