Win the hanging queen on a8 (d5)
li-0NZaNnaming tag (square·N)Opens in the app if installed, otherwise downloads the APK.
The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 1985 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White 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 g1, queen d5, rook a1, bishop d4, pawn b2 f2 c3 g3 a4 h4.
Black: king g8, queen h3, rook e7 a8, bishop d3, pawn c4 a5 h6 f7 g7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 4 points of material (23 against 27; 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 26, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The White king has 0 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26. Qxa8+ Kh7 27. Qf8 f6 28. Qxe7
Why it works
- Great move! queen to a8 keeps the pressure (+5.6).
- Well found: queen to f8 (+5.8).
- Strong! queen to e7 is the sharp choice (+6.1).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kh7, then Qf8 and you win the rook.
Move by move
- 26. Qxa8+ — queen to a8 (capture) with check
- Kh7 — king to h7
- 27. Qf8 — queen to f8
- f6 — pawn to f6
- 28. Qxe7 — queen to e7 (capture)
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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