Rescue the knight to b5
li-02xAQThe tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2277 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
Position on the board
White: king c1, queen d4, rook d1 h1, bishop f4, knight c3, pawn a2 b2 c2 f2 h7.
Black: king h8, queen c7, rook a8 f8, bishop d6, knight e5, pawn d5 e6 f6 g6 a7 b7.
11 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
Solution & explanation
Main line
22. Nb5 Nd3+ 23. Kb1 Nxf4 24. Nxc7
Why it works
- Great move! knight to b5 keeps the pressure (+2.6).
- Well found: king to b1 (+2.6).
- Stunning! knight to c7 gives up material but you stand better (+2.6).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Nd3+, then Kb1 and you stay on top.
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?
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).
Pack 015
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