Discovered attack: rook to g4
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1302 ShuffleRating — club-player level.
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 d2, rook f1 f4, pawn a2 b2 g2 c4 h4 e5.
Black: king g8, queen h6, rook f7 a8, knight e6, pawn d5 h5 a6 b7 c7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 23.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (25 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 g1, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 23, with 39 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d.
The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
23. Rg4+ hxg4 24. Qxh6 Rxf1+ 25. Kxf1
Why it works
- Great move! rook to g4 keeps the pressure (+5.5).
- Well found: queen to h6 (+5.6).
- Strong! king to f1 is the sharp choice (+5.5).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead hxg4, then Qxh6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 23. Rg4+ — rook to g4 with check
- hxg4 — pawn to g4 (capture)
- 24. Qxh6 — queen to h6 (capture)
- Rxf1+ — rook to f1 (capture) with check
- 25. Kxf1 — king to f1 (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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 009
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