Discovered attack: knight to e5 (c6)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1929 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 d3, rook c1 g4, knight g5, pawn b2 g2 a3 h3 d4 f5.
Black: king g8, queen g7, rook c8 f8, knight c6, pawn d5 a6 g6 b7 f7 h7.
11 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 28 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on g1, the black king on g8.
It is Black to move on move 28, with 28 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): c, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 1 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28... Ne5 29. dxe5 Rxc1+ 30. Kh2 Qxe5+
Why it works
- Great move! knight to e5 keeps the pressure (+3.8).
- Well found: rook to c1 (+4.2).
- Strong! queen to e5 is the sharp choice (+4.2).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead dxe5, then Rxc1+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 28… Ne5 — knight to e5
- 29. dxe5 — pawn to e5 (capture)
- Rxc1+ — rook to c1 (capture) with check
- 30. Kh2 — king to h2
- Qxe5+ — queen to e5 (capture) with check
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.
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?
Zwischenzug
Before the obvious recapture — an in-between move that wins more.
A zwischenzug means refusing the obvious reply — usually a recapture — and playing a stronger move with tempo first. Typically it is a check or a deadly threat the opponent must answer, after which you calmly take what was hanging anyway. The sign: inside a sequence of exchanges you own a check or a threat that will not run away. Whenever a line looks forced, ask what poison you can slip in between the moves.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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