Rescue the pawn to g3
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2160 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 g1, queen d2, rook a1 c1, knight f4, pawn f2 e3 a4 b5.
Black: king g8, queen g6, rook g3 f8, bishop h3, pawn e4 a5 d5 b7 g7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 29.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (26 against 27; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 29, with 4 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 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d, g.
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
29. fxg3 Qxg3+ 30. Kh1
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to g3 keeps the pressure (+0.2).
- Well found: king to h1 (+0.8).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Qxg3+, then Kh1 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 29. fxg3 — pawn to g3 (capture)
- Qxg3+ — queen to g3 (capture) with check
- 30. Kh1 — king to h1
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.
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 015
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