Discovered attack: queen to g4
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1752 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
A discovered attack fires when one piece steps aside and unmasks the piece behind it. Look for your own units that block a rook, bishop or queen: moving the front piece — ideally with a threat of its own — springs two attacks in one move.
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 h4, rook d1 e1, bishop b5 g5, pawn a2 b2 c2 f2 g2 h2.
Black: king d7, queen g6, rook a8 h8, bishop d6 c8, knight c6, pawn d4 d5 h6 a7 b7 g7.
12 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (31 against 34; 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 d7.
It is White to move on move 18, with 50 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d.
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
18. Qg4+ Kc7 19. Bd8+ Rxd8 20. Qxg6
Why it works
- Great move! queen to g4 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: bishop to d8 (+4.4).
- Strong! queen to g6 is the sharp choice (+4.3).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kc7, then Bd8+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 18. Qg4+ — queen to g4 with check
- Kc7 — king to c7
- 19. Bd8+ — bishop to d8 with check
- Rxd8 — rook to d8 (capture)
- 20. Qxg6 — queen to g6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Discovered attack
A piece steps aside and opens a second attack from the piece behind it.
A discovered attack works like a curtain: one piece steps off the line and unveils the long-range piece behind it. The beauty is that the moving piece can create a second threat of its own — two attacks in one move. Look for your stacked pairs: a bishop or rook behind a knight or pawn, aimed through them at something valuable. Send the front piece to the most aggressive square — a discovery without a second threat wastes half its power.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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