Rescue the bishop to e3
li-07Jg5Opens 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 1581 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
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 g1, queen d1, rook a1 f1, bishop c1 g2, knight d5, pawn b2 h2 a3 c3 d3 g3 e4.
Black: king g8, queen c5, rook d8 f8, bishop d7 g7, knight b3, pawn e5 g6 h6 a7 b7 c7 f7.
14 white and 14 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 35 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 19, with 5 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. White are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
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.
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. Be3 Qd6 20. Qxb3
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to e3 keeps the pressure (+3.4).
- Well found: queen to b3 (+3.5).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead Qd6, then Qxb3 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 19. Be3 — bishop to e3
- Qd6 — queen to d6
- 20. Qxb3 — queen to b3 (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.
Blocking save
Block the check with tempo — and turn the game around.
The blocking save: you interpose a piece against the check — not passively, but with tempo, so the blocker creates a threat of its own. Such a block turns defense into attack. Whenever you are checked, compare all three replies — capture, move the king, interpose — and among the interpositions hunt for the one that counterattacks. The mistake is automatically stepping aside with the king when an active block would have turned the game around.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 011
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