Rescue the king to f5
li-0Ds1fOpens 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 1943 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 h8, rook c8, pawn b2 g2 a3 h3.
Black: king f6, queen f2, knight e2, pawn a5 e6 g6 f7 h7.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 35.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 17; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on f6.
It is Black to move on move 35, with 3 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 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
35... Kf5 36. Rc1 Nxc1
Why it works
- Best move. king to f5 is exactly what the engine plays (+5.0).
- Well found: knight to c1 (+5.7).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rc1, then Nxc1 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 35… Kf5 — king to f5
- 36. Rc1 — rook to c1
- Nxc1 — knight to c1 (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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