Discovered attack: pawn to c5 (c4)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1644 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 a2, rook f1, knight c3 f3, pawn b2 g2 h2 a3 c4 e4.
Black: king g8, queen b6, rook a8, bishop g4 e7, pawn a5 e5 c6 d6 b7 g7 h7.
11 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 24.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (26 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 24, with 4 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle. White are in check right now, so every reply must answer the check.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d.
Black hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
24. c5+ Kh8 25. cxb6
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to c5 keeps the pressure (+5.6).
- Well found: pawn to b6 (+6.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kh8, then cxb6 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 24. c5+ — pawn to c5 with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 25. cxb6 — pawn to b6 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Discovered check
The moving piece opens a check — and is free to grab anything meanwhile.
With a discovered check the moving piece unmasks a check from the piece standing behind it. While the king deals with the check, the piece that moved grabs whatever it likes, free of charge. Look for your long-range piece on a line with the enemy king, with exactly one of your own pieces in between. The rule: among all the ways to step aside, pick the one that captures or attacks the most expensive loot.
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.
Blocking save
Block the check with tempo — and turn the game around.
The blocking save: you interpose a piece against the check — not passively, but with tempo, so the blocker creates a threat of its own. Such a block turns defense into attack. Whenever you are checked, compare all three replies — capture, move the king, interpose — and among the interpositions hunt for the one that counterattacks. The mistake is automatically stepping aside with the king when an active block would have turned the game around.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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