Rescue the queen 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 2016 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 g1, queen e2, rook a1 e1, bishop b2, knight c3, pawn a2 g2 h2 c4 f4.
Black: king g8, queen e3, rook d8 e8, bishop d6, knight f6, pawn f5 c6 g6 a7 f7 h7.
11 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 19.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (30 against 31; 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 19, 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 5 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
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
19. Qxe3 Rxe3 20. Rxe3 Bc5 21. Re1
Why it works
- Great move! queen to e3 keeps the pressure (+2.7).
- Well found: rook to e3 (+2.8).
- Strong! rook to e1 is the sharp choice (+2.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rxe3, then Rxe3 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 19. Qxe3 — queen to e3 (capture)
- Rxe3 — rook to e3 (capture)
- 20. Rxe3 — rook to e3 (capture)
- Bc5 — bishop to c5
- 21. Re1 — rook to e1
Types in this puzzle
Battery
Two pieces stacked on one line — the front one strikes with double force.
A battery stacks two long-range pieces on one line — a queen behind a bishop on a diagonal, or doubled rooks on a file. The front piece strikes with double force: capture it, and the piece behind recaptures with even more pressure. The battery is ready when both pieces already stare at one point and only the front strike is missing. Build batteries in advance on lines leading to the king — the doubling itself often breeds the combination.
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.
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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