Mate in 3: discovered attack on g4
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Mate in 3: a forced sequence that ends in checkmate.
Difficulty 1708 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.
In a mate in three every move must be forcing; the defender should never get a free tempo. Find the check or threat that herds the king, calculate the single defence to each, and confirm the net closes on the third 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 a7, rook c5, bishop a3 b5, pawn a2 g2 f3 h3.
Black: king g8, queen d4, rook b8, knight e3, pawn f5 e6 g7 h7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 35.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 3 points of material (24 against 21; 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 35, with 43 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c, d — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: a.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. 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
35... Ng4+ 36. Kh1 Qd1+ 37. Bf1 Qxf1#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g4 keeps the pressure (#2).
- Well found: queen to d1 (#1).
- Strong! queen to f1 is the sharp choice (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 3.
- If instead Kh1, then Qd1+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 35… Ng4+ — knight to g4 with check
- 36. Kh1 — king to h1
- Qd1+ — queen to d1 with check
- 37. Bf1 — bishop to f1
- Qxf1# — queen to f1 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
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.
Mate in 3
A forced checkmate in three moves.
Mate in three is a forced staircase: each of your moves narrows the opponent's choices, and the third one ends the game. Look for the start among checks and sacrifices — quiet first moves are rare in mating problems, but deliciously sneaky. Keep the tree in your head: every defense gets its own branch. Do not stop calculating after move two — see the final mating picture with your own eyes.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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