Rescue the pawn to b5
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The tactical motive
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 2293 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 g1, queen e3, rook d1, knight c3 b5, pawn a2 b2 f2 g2 h2 e5.
Black: king g8, queen c7, rook a7, bishop e7, knight b8, pawn b4 a6 e6 h6 f7 g7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 26 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 22, with 35 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): c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
22... axb5 23. Nxb5 Qc2 24. Rc1 Rd7
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to b5 keeps the pressure (+3.6).
- Well found: queen to c2 (+3.8).
- Strong! rook to d7 is the sharp choice (+4.2).
- You reach a winning position (+4.2).
- If instead Nxb5, then Qc2 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 22… axb5 — pawn to b5 (capture)
- 23. Nxb5 — knight to b5 (capture)
- Qc2 — queen to c2
- 24. Rc1 — rook to c1
- Rd7 — rook to d7
Types in this puzzle
Clearance
Clear your own piece out of the way — with tempo — for the decisive blow.
Clearance is about your own piece standing in the way of the decisive blow — so you move it aside, or even throw it away. The key is to clear with tempo: jump off with a check, a capture or a threat, giving the opponent no time to regroup. The telltale sign: you see a crushing queen or rook move, but one of your own pieces blocks the line or occupies the square. Do not cling to it — a clearance sacrifice usually costs less than a missed attack.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 015
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