Discovered attack: bishop to f4
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1874 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 d3, queen d4, rook a1, bishop c1 d5, knight c3, pawn a2 b2 c2 g2.
Black: king b8, queen e1, rook d8 e8, bishop g3, pawn c6 a7 b7 f7 h7.
10 white and 10 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 27.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 27 points of pieces on each side (pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9).
The white king stands on d3, the black king on b8.
It is White to move on move 27, with 41 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: f, h.
White 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
27. Bf4+ Bxf4 28. Rxe1 Rxe1 29. Qxf4+
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to f4 keeps the pressure (+4.4).
- Well found: rook to e1 (+4.8).
- Strong! queen to f4 is the sharp choice (+5.1).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Bxf4, then Rxe1 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 27. Bf4+ — bishop to f4 with check
- Bxf4 — bishop to f4 (capture)
- 28. Rxe1 — rook to e1 (capture)
- Rxe1 — rook to e1 (capture)
- 29. Qxf4+ — queen to f4 (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.
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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