Win the hanging knight on d8
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2240 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black 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.
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, rook d8, pawn a2 b2 f2 h7.
Black: king f4, knight f7, pawn d2 e4 f5 b6 b7.
6 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 50.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (9 against 8; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h2, the black king on f4.
It is Black to move on move 50, with 16 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a, h.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
50... Nxd8 51. h8=Q d1=Q 52. Qh6+ Ke5
Why it works
- Great move! knight to d8 keeps the pressure (+4.6).
- Well found: pawn to d1 (+4.8).
- Strong! king to e5 is the sharp choice (+4.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead h8=Q, then d1=Q and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 50… Nxd8 — knight to d8 (capture)
- 51. h8=Q — pawn to h8
- d1=Q — pawn to d1
- 52. Qh6+ — queen to h6 with check
- Ke5 — king to e5
Types in this puzzle
Promotion
The pawn reaches the last rank and becomes a queen — decisively.
Promotion turns a pawn on the last rank into a queen and rewrites the evaluation on the spot. In tactics the passer rarely walks in for free — usually a sacrifice clears its path. Count the tempi: how many moves does the pawn need, and can the defender stop it in time? And watch the promotion square itself — it must be out of enemy reach or won by force in your combination.
Promotion race
Both sides push passers — win the race by a tempo.
A promotion race is a sprint between two passed pawns: both sides push toward the last rank, and victory goes to whoever queens first or queens with check. You will recognize it when both players have far-advanced passers that neither king can catch. Count the tempi literally, move by move, all the way to promotion. The classic mistake is spending a tempo on a "useful" move — in a race, almost any non-pawn move loses.
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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