Rescue the pawn to h2
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1939 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 a8, rook g4.
Black: king g7, pawn h3 g5.
2 white and 3 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 67.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 3 points of material (5 against 2; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on a8, the black king on g7.
It is Black to move on move 67, with 9 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 0 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, c, d, e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 8 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
67... h2 68. Rxg5+ Kh6 69. Rb5 h1=Q+
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to h2 keeps the pressure (+2.3).
- Well found: king to h6 (+2.3).
- Strong! pawn to h1 is the sharp choice (+2.2).
- You win decisive material (+2.2).
- If instead Rxg5+, then Kh6 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 67… h2 — pawn to h2
- 68. Rxg5+ — rook to g5 (capture) with check
- Kh6 — king to h6
- 69. Rb5 — rook to b5
- h1=Q+ — pawn to h1 with check
Types in this puzzle
Promotion
The pawn reaches the last rank and becomes a queen — decisively.
Promotion turns a pawn on the last rank into a queen and rewrites the evaluation on the spot. In tactics the passer rarely walks in for free — usually a sacrifice clears its path. Count the tempi: how many moves does the pawn need, and can the defender stop it in time? And watch the promotion square itself — it must be out of enemy reach or won by force in your combination.
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 014
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