Rescue the rook to b2
li-02TnfOpens 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 1824 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 h1, queen a4, rook e1 a6, pawn g2 h2 e4 d6.
Black: king g8, queen g5, rook b8, bishop d4, pawn c5 g6 f7 h7.
8 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 35.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (23 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 35, with 46 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: d, e.
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
35... Rb2 36. Ra8+ Kg7 37. Qxd4+ cxd4
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b2 keeps the pressure (+5.5).
- Well found: king to g7 (+5.7).
- Strong! pawn to d4 is the sharp choice (+5.7).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Ra8+, then Kg7 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 35… Rb2 — rook to b2
- 36. Ra8+ — rook to a8 with check
- Kg7 — king to g7
- 37. Qxd4+ — queen to d4 (capture) with check
- cxd4 — pawn to d4 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
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.
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
Similar puzzles
In your browser or in the Android app. Nothing to install · Free, no ads