Mate in 2: discovered attack on h8
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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 1811 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 f6, rook h6, bishop e5, pawn c5 g6.
Black: king g8, queen d1 a6, bishop e4, pawn f5 c6.
5 white and 6 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 61.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 13 points of material (10 against 23; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on f6, the black king on g8.
It is White to move on move 61, with 21 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 2 pawns, Black 2. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): a, b, d, e, h — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: f.
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
61. Rh8+ Kxh8 62. Kf7#
Why it works
- Great move! rook to h8 keeps the pressure (#1).
- Well found: king to f7 (#).
- The line ends in a forced mate in 2.
- If instead Kxh8, then Kf7# and it is mate.
Move by move
- 61. Rh8+ — rook to h8 with check
- Kxh8 — king to h8 (capture)
- 62. Kf7# — king to f7 and it is checkmate
Types in this puzzle
Discovered mate
A piece steps aside — and the one behind it delivers mate.
In a discovered mate the piece that moves is not the one that mates — the long-range piece behind it delivers the blow. The moving piece is completely free: it can land anywhere, ideally stealing the king's last squares or guarding key points. Look for your rook, bishop or queen lined up with the enemy king, with exactly one of your own pieces in between. When choosing the unveiling move, remember its second job — shutting the king's escape door.
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.
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.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 013
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