Discovered attack: rook to g3 (g2)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1814 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, queen f3, rook f1 g2, pawn b2 a3 c4 h4 d5.
Black: king h6, queen f5, rook f8, knight g3, pawn f4 d6 g6 a7 b7 c7 h7.
9 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 30.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 24 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 h6.
It is White to move on move 30, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 7. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: f, g.
The White king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
30. Rxg3 fxg3 31. Qe3+ Kg7 32. Rxf5
Why it works
- Great move! rook to g3 keeps the pressure (+4.1).
- Well found: queen to e3 (+4.7).
- Strong! rook to f5 is the sharp choice (+4.8).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead fxg3, then Qe3+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 30. Rxg3 — rook to g3 (capture)
- fxg3 — pawn to g3 (capture)
- 31. Qe3+ — queen to e3 with check
- Kg7 — king to g7
- 32. Rxf5 — rook to f5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Sacrifice attack
Give up material to unleash a decisive attack.
A sacrificial attack gives up material on purpose to rip the king's shelter open and launch a decisive assault. The sac is sound when you get concrete assets in return: open lines to the king, tempi, pieces ready to pour in. The signs: a poorly sheltered king, your forces aimed at its home, defenders stranded far away. The iron rule is to calculate, not hope — once the material is gone, there is no way back.
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.
Remove the defender
Capture the guard first — then take what it protected.
Removing the defender is the straightforward plan: capture the guard first, then take what it guarded. Unlike deflection, the defender is not lured away — it is traded off or destroyed on the spot. Stare at the target you crave and ask who defends it, and whether that defender can be profitably eaten. Count the whole capture sequence, not just the first move — the trade must pay off at the end.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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