Rescue the queen to g7
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1983 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 h2, queen g7, rook b7, pawn f2 e3 g3 b4 h4 a5.
Black: king h6, queen b2, bishop f5, pawn f3 e4 c5 a6 e6 h7.
9 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 42.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 2 points of material (20 against 18; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h2, the black king on h6.
It is Black to move on move 42, with 2 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. Black are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b, g.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
42... Qxg7 43. Rxg7 Kxg7 44. b5 e5
Why it works
- Great move! queen to g7 keeps the pressure (+2.5).
- Well found: king to g7 (+4.4).
- Strong! pawn to e5 is the sharp choice (+5.1).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rxg7, then Kxg7 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 42… Qxg7 — queen to g7 (capture)
- 43. Rxg7 — rook to g7 (capture)
- Kxg7 — king to g7 (capture)
- 44. b5 — pawn to b5
- e5 — pawn to e5
Types in this puzzle
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.
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.
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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