Rescue the rook to h7
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2036 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 h3, queen d5, rook g5, pawn a2 f3 g4 e6.
Black: king g8, queen f4, rook e7, pawn g6 a7 b7.
7 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 37.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 17; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h3, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 37, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, d, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: e, f.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
37... Rh7+ 38. Rh5 gxh5 39. e7+ Kg7
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h7 keeps the pressure (+3.8).
- Well found: pawn to h5 (+3.9).
- Strong! king to g7 is the sharp choice (+3.9).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rh5, then gxh5 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 37… Rh7+ — rook to h7 with check
- 38. Rh5 — rook to h5
- gxh5 — pawn to h5 (capture)
- 39. e7+ — pawn to e7 with check
- Kg7 — king to g7
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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.
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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