Win the hanging queen on e4
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 1740 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White 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 f1, queen c2, rook a1 h1, bishop e2, knight f3, pawn a2 f2 g2 b3 e3 h3.
Black: king b8, queen b4, rook d8 e8, knight e4 e5, pawn c4 g5 a7 b7 c7 f7 h7.
12 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (31 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 f1, the black king on b8.
It is White to move on move 19, with 33 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
19. Qxe4 Nxf3 20. Qxf3
Why it works
- Great move! queen to e4 keeps the pressure (+2.9).
- Well found: queen to f3 (+2.6).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead Nxf3, then Qxf3 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 19. Qxe4 — queen to e4 (capture)
- Nxf3 — knight to f3 (capture)
- 20. Qxf3 — queen to f3 (capture)
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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