Rescue the king to h2
li-0G3N6Opens 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 2339 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 h1, queen g5, knight e4, pawn h3 f6.
Black: king h7, queen a1, rook f8, pawn c6 e6 f7.
5 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (14 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 h7.
It is White to move on move 37, with 4 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 2 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, d, g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: c, e.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37. Kh2 Qa2+ 38. Nd2 Qxd2+ 39. Qxd2
Why it works
- Great move! king to h2 keeps the pressure (+4.9).
- Well found: knight to d2 (+5.7).
- Strong! queen to d2 is the sharp choice (+5.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qa2+, then Nd2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 37. Kh2 — king to h2
- Qa2+ — queen to a2 with check
- 38. Nd2 — knight to d2
- Qxd2+ — queen to d2 (capture) with check
- 39. Qxd2 — queen to d2 (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.
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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