Discovered attack: pawn to e3
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 2006 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
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 h1, queen a3, rook d8, pawn e2 g3 b4 h4.
Black: king f7, queen b7, bishop f2, pawn c4 e4 a6 g7 h7.
7 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 36.
The position in numbers
White are ahead by 1 points of material (18 against 17; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on h1, the black king on f7.
It is Black to move on move 36, with 31 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 4 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, f — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for Black: b.
The Black king has 4 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
36... e3+ 37. Kh2 Qc7 38. Rd7+ Qxd7
Why it works
- Great move! pawn to e3 keeps the pressure (+4.2).
- Well found: queen to c7 (+5.2).
- Strong! queen to d7 is the sharp choice (+5.4).
- You win a piece — the rook.
- If instead Kh2, then Qc7 and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 36… e3+ — pawn to e3 with check
- 37. Kh2 — king to h2
- Qc7 — queen to c7
- 38. Rd7+ — rook to d7 with check
- Qxd7 — queen to d7 (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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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