Win the hanging king on d2
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 2128 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.
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 c1, rook a1 e1, knight f3, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h2 c3.
Black: king c8, rook d2 e8, bishop f5, knight e5, pawn a7 b7 f7 g7 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (19 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on c8.
It is White to move on move 18, with 25 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18. Kxd2 Nxf3+ 19. gxf3
Why it works
- Great move! king to d2 keeps the pressure (+3.4).
- Well found: pawn to f3 (+3.5).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Nxf3+, then gxf3 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 18. Kxd2 — king to d2 (capture)
- Nxf3+ — knight to f3 (capture) with check
- 19. gxf3 — pawn to f3 (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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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