Discovered attack: bishop to f3
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1000 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
Black 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 h1, queen c5, rook a1 e1, knight e2 d4, pawn a2 b2 c2 f3 g3.
Black: king f6, queen e5, rook d8 h8, bishop d5, pawn h2 a7 b7 f7 g7.
11 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 22.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 3 points of material (30 against 27; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on f6.
It is Black to move on move 22, with 46 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
22... Bxf3+ 23. Nxf3 Qxc5
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f3 keeps the pressure (+4.3).
- Well found: queen to c5 (+4.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Nxf3, then Qxc5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 22… Bxf3+ — bishop to f3 (capture) with check
- 23. Nxf3 — knight to f3 (capture)
- Qxc5 — queen to c5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Win the pinned piece
The pinned piece cannot run — attack it again and win it.
A pinned piece cannot flee, which means you can win it outright by attacking it one more time. Count attackers against defenders: if you outnumber them, the piece is yours. The best extra attacker is a pawn, since it costs less than anything it might capture. Do not rush the capture — build up the pressure first, then harvest.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 006
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