Discovered attack: pawn to h4
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1704 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 g1, queen g3, rook e3, pawn a2 f2 g2 b3 h3 d4 e5.
Black: king g8, queen f5, rook f7, pawn g5 h5 a6 c6 e6 b7.
10 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 33.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (21 against 20; 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 33, with 30 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 7 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for Black: d, f.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
33... h4 34. Qf3 Qb1+ 35. Kh2 Rxf3
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to h4 keeps the pressure (+5.2).
- Well found: queen to b1 (+5.2).
- Strong! rook to f3 is the sharp choice (+5.2).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Qf3, then Qb1+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 33… h4 — pawn to h4
- 34. Qf3 — queen to f3
- Qb1+ — queen to b1 with check
- 35. Kh2 — king to h2
- Rxf3 — rook to f3 (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.
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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