Fork: bishop to b3
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The tactical motive
Fork: one piece attacks two targets at once — they can't both be saved.
Save the piece: one of your pieces is attacked — find the best way to rescue it.
Difficulty 1971 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A fork is one piece attacking two targets at once. Look for a knight, pawn or queen move that lands where it hits the king (or a bigger piece) and a second undefended unit on the same turn — the opponent can save only one.
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 c1, rook h1 d3, bishop c2 h6, pawn b2 f2 g2 b4.
Black: king g8, queen a2, rook e8, bishop f5, pawn d4 e5 a6 g6 b7 h7.
9 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (20 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on c1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 25, with 36 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: a, d, e, h.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
25. Bb3+ Qxb3 26. Rxb3 Rc8+ 27. Kd2
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to b3 keeps the pressure (+2.8).
- Well found: rook to b3 (+2.6).
- Strong! king to d2 is the sharp choice (+2.9).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qxb3, then Rxb3 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 25. Bb3+ — bishop to b3 with check
- Qxb3 — queen to b3 (capture)
- 26. Rxb3 — rook to b3 (capture)
- Rc8+ — rook to c8 with check
- 27. Kd2 — king to d2
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.
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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