Rescue the king to f3
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2356 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 d1, rook e2, bishop c2.
Black: king f2, rook d4, pawn d2 g3.
3 white and 4 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 66.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (8 against 7; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on d1, the black king on f2.
It is Black to move on move 66, 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 0 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c, e, f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
66... Kf3 67. Bb3 g2 68. Rxg2 Kxg2
Why it works
- Great move! king to f3 keeps the pressure (+4.6).
- Well found: pawn to g2 (+4.4).
- Strong! king to g2 is the sharp choice (+5.1).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Bb3, then g2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 66… Kf3 — king to f3
- 67. Bb3 — bishop to b3
- g2 — pawn to g2
- 68. Rxg2 — rook to g2 (capture)
- Kxg2 — king to g2 (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.
Passed pawn
Nothing can stop the passer — escort it to the last rank.
A passed pawn has no enemy pawns in front of it or on the neighboring files: only pieces can stop it. Check who can blockade the pawn or catch it with the king — if nobody can, the pawn is worth a whole piece. Push the passer with your pieces supporting it, and put your rook behind it. The beginner's mistake is shoving the pawn forward unprotected, straight into a capture.
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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