Discovered attack: rook to h7
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 2232 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 c1, queen g4, rook g1 h1, bishop d3 b4, pawn a3 f4 e5 g6.
Black: king g7, queen d4, rook a8 h8, bishop d7, knight f5 e7, pawn d5 e6.
10 white and 9 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 28.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 1 points of material (29 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 c1, the black king on g7.
It is White to move on move 28, with 43 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): b, c, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: d.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
28. Rh7+ Rxh7 29. gxh7+ Kh8 30. Bxf5
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h7 keeps the pressure (+3.7).
- Well found: pawn to h7 (+4.0).
- Strong! bishop to f5 is the sharp choice (+4.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Rxh7, then gxh7+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 28. Rh7+ — rook to h7 with check
- Rxh7 — rook to h7 (capture)
- 29. gxh7+ — pawn to h7 (capture) with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 30. Bxf5 — bishop to f5 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Discovered check
The moving piece opens a check — and is free to grab anything meanwhile.
With a discovered check the moving piece unmasks a check from the piece standing behind it. While the king deals with the check, the piece that moved grabs whatever it likes, free of charge. Look for your long-range piece on a line with the enemy king, with exactly one of your own pieces in between. The rule: among all the ways to step aside, pick the one that captures or attacks the most expensive loot.
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).
Pack 015
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