Win the hanging rook on h5
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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 2303 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.
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 g3, rook h5, pawn f6.
Black: king b5, rook c5.
3 white and 2 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 52.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (6 against 5; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g3, the black king on b5.
It is Black to move on move 52, with 12 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 1 pawns, Black 0. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c, d, e, g, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: f.
The Black king has 7 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
52... Rxh5 53. Kg4 Rh8 54. Kf5 Kc6
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h5 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: rook to h8 (+6.5).
- Strong! king to c6 is the sharp choice (+7.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kg4, then Rh8 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 52… Rxh5 — rook to h5 (capture)
- 53. Kg4 — king to g4
- Rh8 — rook to h8
- 54. Kf5 — king to f5
- Kc6 — king to c6
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.
Only move
Everything else loses — find the only move that holds.
An only move is a position where everything loses except one single continuation. You cannot play "by hand" here: run through fundamentally different defenses — run away, block, trade, counterattack — and discard the ones that fail. The hallmark of these puzzles is that the obvious moves lose quickly while the solution often looks strange. First understand exactly what the threat is — then the one saving move reveals itself.
Rook endgame
The most common endgame — activity decides everything.
The rook endgame is the most common of all: rooks and pawns on the board. Its first law is activity — a rook behind a passed pawn beats a rook passively babysitting one. The sign of a correct plan is that your rook is attacking something, not guarding something. The typical error is locking your rook into defense: it is often better to give up a pawn and keep your rook and king active.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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