Win the hanging bishop on h4 (e7)
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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 2102 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 c1, queen d2, rook d1 h1, bishop b3, knight h4, pawn b2 c2 f2 a3 d3 h3 f5 h6.
Black: king h8, queen d7, rook c8 f8, bishop e7, knight h5, pawn d4 b5 d5 e5 a6 f7 g7.
14 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 20.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (33 against 32; 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 h8.
It is Black to move on move 20, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 8 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: c, h.
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
20... Bxh4 21. hxg7+ Kxg7 22. Rdg1+ Kh7
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h4 keeps the pressure (+2.5).
- Well found: king to g7 (+2.5).
- Strong! king to h7 is the sharp choice (+2.8).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead hxg7+, then Kxg7 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 20… Bxh4 — bishop to h4 (capture)
- 21. hxg7+ — pawn to g7 (capture) with check
- Kxg7 — king to g7 (capture)
- 22. Rdg1+ — rook to g1 with check
- Kh7 — king to h7
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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