Capture the defender Chess Puzzles

By the numbers

capture the defender puzzles: the numbers

There are 39,810 capture the defender puzzles, solved 128,058,830 times in total. The median rating is 1604.

How hard are they?

Often combined with

Middlegame tactics · 28,000Endgame tactics · 8,150Fork · 5,019Pin · 4,131Discovered attack · 3,727Opening tactics · 3,660Attraction · 3,584Intermezzo (in-between move) · 3,111

Which openings produce them?

Sicilian Defence · 2,464French Defence · 1,058Caro–Kann Defence · 878Scandinavian Defense · 851Queen's Gambit · 755Italian Game · 720English Opening · 559

Counts computed from the full puzzle set.

How the solutions work · counted by a rules engine

What a typical capture the defender solution looks like

Sample: 1,976 capture the defender puzzles (5% of all 39,810).

55.9% need 2 solver moves, 35.2% need 3 solver moves, 6.6% need 4 solver moves, 2.3% need 5 or more solver moves. Median rating: 1449 for the shortest solutions, 2457 for the longest.

28.7% open with a rook move. The first move captures in 84.4% and gives check in 8.1%; 0.3% end in checkmate, 29.5% involve a sacrifice, 51.4% have White to move.

How many moves does the solver need?

Which piece plays the key move?

What does the solver win?

Material balance along the whole line, counting every capture by both sides (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9):

How much is left on the board?

How it is counted: every puzzle in the sample is replayed move by move with a chess rules engine. A sacrifice means a piece that is captured on the very next ply and was worth more than what it captured itself (pawn 1, minor piece 3, rook 5, queen 9). Sample of 1,976 puzzles. Percentages are shares of the sample.

Where it happens

Where the key move lands

Where the solver’s first move ends, drawn from their own side (rank 1 is their back rank). Busiest squares: f6 (10.8%), c6 (7.5%), d5 (6.5%), e5 (5.9%), d7 (5.6%).

Counted from the same 1,976-puzzle sample. Squares under 1% are left blank.