Rescue the pawn to g4
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2336 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 e2, queen b2, rook c1, bishop f5, knight d4, pawn f2 a3 e3 g3 b4.
Black: king g7, queen h5, rook c8, bishop d5, knight f6, pawn c4 b5 a6 g6 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 35.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 25 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on e2, the black king on g7.
It is White to move on move 35, with 7 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 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, h.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
35. g4 c3 36. Rxc3 Nxg4 37. Rxc8
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to g4 keeps the pressure (+2.7).
- Well found: rook to c3 (+3.7).
- Strong! rook to c8 is the sharp choice (+3.3).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead c3, then Rxc3 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 35. g4 — pawn to g4
- c3 — pawn to c3
- 36. Rxc3 — rook to c3 (capture)
- Nxg4 — knight to g4 (capture)
- 37. Rxc8 — rook to c8 (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).
Pack 015
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