Win the hanging rook on f1
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 2007 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
Black 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 h2, queen c2, rook f1 g6, knight g5, pawn a2 b2 g2 c3 h3 e6.
Black: king g8, queen b6, rook e8 f8, pawn h4 d5 c6 a7 b7 g7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 30.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 3 points of material (28 against 25; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 30, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: e.
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
30... Rxf1 31. Rxg7+ Kxg7 32. Qh7+ Kf6
Why it works
- Great move! rook to f1 keeps the pressure (+5.1).
- Well found: king to g7 (+6.0).
- Strong! king to f6 is the sharp choice (+6.0).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxg7+, then Kxg7 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 30… Rxf1 — rook to f1 (capture)
- 31. Rxg7+ — rook to g7 (capture) with check
- Kxg7 — king to g7 (capture)
- 32. Qh7+ — queen to h7 with check
- Kf6 — king to f6
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 014
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