Preston's Brad Potts (second right) celebrates scoring against Hull City
Brad Potts fired Preston North End to a first home win in seven league outings at Deepdale to pile further pressure on struggling Hull City.
Paul Heckingbottom's side have endured a frustrating run of five draws and one defeat since beating Coventry in the middle of October.
But Potts' cool finish on the hour mark, his second in three games, secured all three points for North End and only a second victory in their past 13 matches.
It edged Preston away from the drop zone and into 15th place but left Ruben Selles' Tigers, now without a win in seven on the road, right in the mix at the bottom of the table.
Defeat saw former Reading manager's new side, in his fourth game in the Tigers dugout, drop a place into the final relegation place in 22nd.
Preston have been struggling to convert winning positions into points. Just two matches back they were good enough to hold promotion hopefuls Leeds United to a draw with another Potts goal only cancelled out in the dying minutes.
Yet a slip against Hull City would have been a second poor result on the bounce following last Saturday's defeat against QPR so this victory will deliver a welcome boost going into a second Christmas assignment against Sheffield Wednesday at Deepdale on Sunday.
For Hull, their struggles continue, particularly away from home where they are still looking for a first clean sheet of the season.
They were, at times, decent going forward and had chances to both take the lead and draw level.
It was also a result though which could reduce Selles' honeymoon period in the job with tough-looking home fixtures against Middlesbrough and Leeds next up.
The Tigers had started on the front foot, pinning back a slow-starting North End and carving the game's first and perhaps best chance inside six minutes.
Freddie Woodman deserves huge credit for an excellent reaction save, getting down to his right sharply to deny Joao Pedro's fierce shot from just inside the box.
But in blocking the ball out to his right, he presented Regan Slater with a near open goal only for the Hull midfielder to side-foot over from six yards out.
It was a let-off which stung Preston into action, the hosts putting together a couple of decent moves as the half wore on and, but for a lack of composure and quality in front of goal, they could have taken the lead.
To Preston's credit though repeated mistakes did not deter them and with the pressure building steadily as the game reached the hour mark a breakthrough arrived.
It was a good move and a good finish, too.
Mads Frojkaer-Jensen sprung Kaine Kesler-Hayden in the left channel and his cut-back met a tidy finish from 12 yards out by Potts - his angled side foot past Ivor Pandur delivering his third goal of the season.
Preston deserved the lead but were made to sweat after spurning chances to put the game to bed. As the final whistle approached they had cause to thank the excellent Woodman for safeguarding those points.
With four minutes of normal time left, Woodman produced a fine reaction to paw away Cody Drameh's dangerous cross and the Preston keeper was also on hand in the sixth minute of stoppage time to gather Gustavo Puerta's headed effort.
Paul Heckingbottom's Preston North End have only lost one of their last eight games, but drawn five of them
Preston North End manager Paul Heckingbottom said:
"We've been far more dominant than that in so many games and only got a point, so I'm really pleased that we've come out on top when the margins are really fine.
"We weren't too bothered if they have the ball but I think we gave them too much respect at the start of the game. I felt we were just slightly off. We didn't quite get to the ball and we were a little bit behind the press.
"But then, as the first half wore on, we got better and had our moments but we needed to up it in the second half and I thought we did.
"Until the goal, we were building momentum which was really pleasing and then the goal was fantastic from our point of view. I'm really pleased with it. Then we had to defend well and we managed the game really well."
Hull City manager Ruben Selles said:
"We created situations to score at least one goal and then in one moment we went 1-0 down and never recovered in terms of the score. I think we were competitive enough.
"We created situations, it's not just the situation with Regan after five minutes. We created other situations and we need to make it count, but we created the situations so we just need to work on the details.
"You come away from difficult games in difficult competitions and first of all we need to be competitive and second of all we need to win football matches.
"Without being competitive we are not going to win games. We need to continue developing that competitiveness and in games like today, when we have the opportunities, we have to make it count and then we'll be in a better place.
"We have to try to not make excuses. We know we can do things. Now we have to do it to the very end."
