Rescue the rook to e3
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2560 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White 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 h2, queen b3, rook a1 f3, bishop e2 g3, pawn a2 b2 g2 c3 d4 h4 e5.
Black: king g8, queen g4, rook g6 c8, bishop b7, knight e7, pawn e3 f5 b6 e6 a7 g7 h7.
13 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 32 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h2, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 26, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 7. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: f.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Rxe3 Bf3 27. Rxf3 f4 28. Kg1
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e3 keeps the pressure (+2.9).
- Well found: rook to f3 (+3.1).
- Strong! king to g1 is the sharp choice (+3.2).
- You win a piece — the bishop.
- If instead Bf3, then Rxf3 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 26. Rxe3 — rook to e3 (capture)
- Bf3 — bishop to f3
- 27. Rxf3 — rook to f3 (capture)
- f4 — pawn to f4
- 28. Kg1 — king to g1
Types in this puzzle
Discovered attack
A piece steps aside and opens a second attack from the piece behind it.
A discovered attack works like a curtain: one piece steps off the line and unveils the long-range piece behind it. The beauty is that the moving piece can create a second threat of its own — two attacks in one move. Look for your stacked pairs: a bishop or rook behind a knight or pawn, aimed through them at something valuable. Send the front piece to the most aggressive square — a discovery without a second threat wastes half its power.
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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