Discovered attack: rook to g7 (g6)
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The tactical motive
Discovered attack: one piece steps aside, unleashing another's attack.
Difficulty 2276 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 g1, rook d1 g6, bishop e5, pawn a2 f2 g2 h2 c3.
Black: king h7, queen a5, rook f8, knight e4, pawn g5 h6 a7 b7.
9 white and 8 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 25.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 3 points of material (18 against 21; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on h7.
It is White to move on move 25, with 42 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 4. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b.
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
25. Rg7+ Kh8 26. Rxg5+ Qxe5 27. Rxe5
Why it works
- Great move! rook to g7 keeps the pressure (+5.5).
- Well found: rook to g5 (+5.4).
- Strong! rook to e5 is the sharp choice (+5.3).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kh8, then Rxg5+ and you stay on top.
Move by move
- 25. Rg7+ — rook to g7 with check
- Kh8 — king to h8
- 26. Rxg5+ — rook to g5 (capture) with check
- Qxe5 — queen to e5 (capture)
- 27. Rxe5 — rook to e5 (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 015
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