Discovered attack: rook to b1
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1931 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, rook f1 c3, bishop b5, knight f3, pawn c2 d2 f2 g2 h2.
Black: king b6, rook a8 e8, bishop c8, knight f6 d7, pawn e4 a7 b7 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 20.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 2 points of material (21 against 23; 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 b6.
It is White to move on move 20, with 33 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: a, b, e.
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
20. Rb1 a6 21. Bxd7+ Ka7 22. Bxe8
Why it works
- Great move! rook to b1 keeps the pressure (+4.2).
- Well found: bishop to d7 (+4.3).
- Strong! bishop to e8 is the sharp choice (+4.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead a6, then Bxd7+ and you win the knight.
Move by move
- 20. Rb1 — rook to b1
- a6 — pawn to a6
- 21. Bxd7+ — bishop to d7 (capture) with check
- Ka7 — king to a7
- 22. Bxe8 — bishop to e8 (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.
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 014
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