Win the hanging queen on f2
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The tactical motive
Hanging piece: your opponent left a piece undefended — take it.
Difficulty 1994 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 f6, queen b6, knight d6, pawn b2 c2 d3 g3 e4.
Black: king b8, queen f2, rook d1 g8, pawn e5 c6 b7.
8 white and 7 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 44.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (17 against 22; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f6, the black king on b8.
It is White to move on move 44, with 5 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. White are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 3. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, f, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
44. Qxf2 Rf8+ 45. Nf7
Why it works
- Great move! queen to f2 keeps the pressure (+5.8).
- Well found: knight to f7 (+5.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Rf8+, then Nf7 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 44. Qxf2 — queen to f2 (capture)
- Rf8+ — rook to f8 with check
- 45. Nf7 — knight to f7
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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