Win the hanging rook on e3
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2123 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A hanging piece is one that is attacked and not defended, or defended too few times. Count attackers against defenders on each enemy unit; where attackers win, take it — often with an in-between move or a check to gain the extra tempo.
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 g1, queen d4, rook d1 h3, pawn a2 g2 f4 e5.
Black: king g8, queen g4, rook c7, knight e3, pawn b5 f5 a6 e6 g6 d7 h7.
8 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 34.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (23 against 24; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 34, with 38 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b, d, 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
34. Rxe3 Rc2 35. Rd2 Rc1+ 36. Kh2
Why it works
- Great move! rook to e3 keeps the pressure (+4.1).
- Well found: rook to d2 (+3.6).
- Strong! king to h2 is the sharp choice (+4.1).
- You win a piece — the knight.
- If instead Rc2, then Rd2 and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 34. Rxe3 — rook to e3 (capture)
- Rc2 — rook to c2
- 35. Rd2 — rook to d2
- Rc1+ — rook to c1 with check
- 36. Kh2 — king to h2
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.
Mate defense
Mate is threatened — parry it and stay on top.
Mate defense: your opponent is one move from mating you — but it is your turn, and that changes everything. Find the defense that kills the mating threat while keeping your advantage: often a check or a counter-threat that leaves no time for the mate. First name the exact square where the mate would land — otherwise you are defending blind. The mistake is playing a "defensive" move that does not actually remove the threat.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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