Rescue the pawn to e3
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2486 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 f1, queen h5, rook a1, bishop h3, pawn f2 a3 d3 f4 h4.
Black: king h8, queen g7, rook g8, knight e3, pawn e5 f6 h6 a7 b7 c7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (22 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f1, the black king on h8.
It is White to move on move 25, with 3 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 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): g — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, 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
25. fxe3 Qg1+ 26. Ke2 Qh2+ 27. Ke1
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to e3 keeps the pressure (+2.1).
- king to e2 develops smoothly.
- Strong! king to e1 is the sharp choice (+2.6).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead Qg1+, then Ke2 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 25. fxe3 — pawn to e3 (capture)
- Qg1+ — queen to g1 with check
- 26. Ke2 — king to e2
- Qh2+ — queen to h2 with check
- 27. Ke1 — king to e1
Types in this puzzle
Discovered attack
A piece steps aside and opens a second attack from the piece behind it.
A discovered attack works like a curtain: one piece steps off the line and unveils the long-range piece behind it. The beauty is that the moving piece can create a second threat of its own — two attacks in one move. Look for your stacked pairs: a bishop or rook behind a knight or pawn, aimed through them at something valuable. Send the front piece to the most aggressive square — a discovery without a second threat wastes half its power.
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.
King evacuation
The king walks out of the danger zone on its own feet.
King evacuation: when the shelter collapses, the king walks out of the attack on his own feet — sometimes across half the board. A series of precise king moves carries him out of the firing zone, and the enemy attack dissolves. The signs: no direct defense works, but there is a route over unattacked squares to a quiet corner. Calculate the entire journey in advance — a king stranded halfway usually dies there.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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