Rescue the king to f7
li-0CBVAOpens 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 1910 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
Black 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 h1, queen d2, rook c8, bishop h6, pawn a2 g2 h2 b3 e4 d5.
Black: king g8, queen b6, rook f2, bishop g7, pawn e5 a6 d6 g6 b7 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 23 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on h1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 25, with 4 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25... Kf7 26. Qc1 Bxh6 27. Qc7+ Qxc7
Why it works
- Great move! king to f7 keeps the pressure (+4.0).
- Well found: bishop to h6 (+4.1).
- Strong! queen to c7 is the sharp choice (+4.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qc1, then Bxh6 and you win the bishop.
Move by move
- 25… Kf7 — king to f7
- 26. Qc1 — queen to c1
- Bxh6 — bishop to h6 (capture)
- 27. Qc7+ — queen to c7 with check
- Qxc7 — queen to c7 (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.
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 014
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