Mate in 2: discovered attack on g6
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Mate in 2: the first move creates an unstoppable threat, the second delivers mate.
Difficulty 1707 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.
Mate in two usually opens with a forcing move — a check, a capture or an unstoppable threat — that strips the king of squares or defenders, so the follow-up mate becomes unavoidable. Look for the first move that leaves the opponent only losing replies.
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 c3, rook a1, bishop a2 b2, knight e5, pawn g2 h2 a3 f3 d5.
Black: king h8, queen d8, rook a8 f8, bishop c8, knight f1 d6, pawn e4 c6 a7 b7 g7 h7.
11 white and 13 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 21.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 6 points of material (28 against 34; 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 h8.
It is White to move on move 21, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 6. No file is fully open, so the heavy pieces have to be pried in. Half-open for White: b, c, e.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
21. Ng6+ hxg6 22. Qxg7#
Why it works
- Great move! knight to g6 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: queen to g7 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead hxg6, then Qxg7# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 21. Ng6+ — knight to g6 with check
- hxg6 — pawn to g6 (capture)
- 22. Qxg7# — queen to g7 (capture) and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Supported queen mate
The queen delivers mate face to face, protected by a friend.
The supported queen mate is the most common pattern of all: the queen lands next to the king and mates because a friendly piece or pawn protects her. The king is helpless — capturing is impossible, and the queen covers every neighboring square herself. Hunt for a protected square beside the enemy king: a knight, bishop or pawn eyeing it turns her invasion into mate. Verify one thing — that the square really is defended, or the king eats her.
Mate in 2
A forced checkmate in two moves.
Mate in two: your move, any reply, then the mating blow. Start with the most forcing first moves — checks and sacrifices that shrink the opponent's options to almost nothing. Against every single reply you must have a mate ready, so check them all without exception. The common failure is analyzing the pretty defense and forgetting the boring one.
Corner mate
Driven into the corner, the king runs out of squares.
The corner mate catches a king driven into the corner, where it has only three neighboring squares — all of them taken away or blocked. The corner is the worst home for a king, because the attacker needs to control the fewest squares there. Herd the king toward the corner with checks and never let it slip back toward the center. Cut off the escape routes before the final check, and the mate practically assembles itself.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Verified by Stockfish at depth 20+.
Solution forcedness confirmed (verified).
Pack 013
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