Discovered attack: bishop to d3
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 1970 ShuffleRating — for advanced tacticians.
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 f4, rook e1 f1, bishop d1, knight e5, pawn b2 g2 h2 a3 c3 d4.
Black: king g8, queen g5, rook f6 f8, bishop f5, knight b6, pawn c4 b5 d5 h6 a7 g7.
12 white and 12 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 26.
The position in numbers
Material is level — 31 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 g8.
It is Black to move on move 26, with 40 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 6 pawns, Black 6. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): e, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen.
The Black king has 2 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
26... Bd3 27. Nxd3 Rxf4 28. Nxf4 Rxf4
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to d3 keeps the pressure (+3.9).
- Well found: rook to f4 (+3.9).
- Strong! rook to f4 is the sharp choice (+4.3).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Nxd3, then Rxf4 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 26… Bd3 — bishop to d3
- 27. Nxd3 — knight to d3 (capture)
- Rxf4 — rook to f4 (capture)
- 28. Nxf4 — knight to f4 (capture)
- Rxf4 — rook to f4 (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.
Winning exchange
A forced series of captures on one square ends in your favour.
A winning exchange is a forced series of captures on one square that leaves you ahead in material. It is pure arithmetic: count the attackers and defenders of the square and note the value of every piece in the queue. Capture in the right order — cheap pieces first, expensive ones later — or a winning trade turns into a losing one. The classic error is stopping the count halfway and missing the opponent's final recapture.
Quiet move
No check, no capture — yet this modest move decides the game.
A quiet move gives no check and takes nothing — yet it decides the game by creating an unstoppable threat or stealing the king's last square. This is the hardest class of moves: the eye hunts for loud blows while a modest shift does the winning. The clue: every forcing try runs into a defense, so seek the move that strengthens the threat or takes squares away. Train yourself to ask: what if I neither capture nor check, but quietly improve?
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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