Discovered attack: bishop to h2 (d6)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 950 ShuffleRating — for beginners taking their first steps in Chess960 tactics.
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 d5, rook a1 f1, bishop e3, knight f3, pawn a2 f2 c3 h3 d4 g4.
Black: king g8, queen d8, rook a8 e8, bishop d6, knight b8, pawn b6 g6 a7 f7 g7.
12 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (31 against 30; 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 18, with 33 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: c, d, h.
The Black king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18... Bh2+ 19. Nxh2 Qxd5
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to h2 keeps the pressure (+5.2).
- Well found: queen to d5 (+5.0).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Nxh2, then Qxd5 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 18… Bh2+ — bishop to h2 with check
- 19. Nxh2 — knight to h2 (capture)
- Qxd5 — queen to d5 (capture)
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.
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.
Counter-strike
Don't defend — answer the threat with a bigger one.
The counter-strike: instead of defending against the threat, you answer with a bigger threat of your own. While your opponent grabs a pawn, you deliver mate — the arithmetic favors you. Look for a counter when direct defenses fail: do you have a check, an attack on the queen, a mating threat? The beginner's error is meeting every threat with a reflexive defense without checking the counterattacking resources first.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 005
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