What is a discovered attack?
In a discovered attack, moving one piece uncovers an attack from a piece behind it. What makes the motif so strong is that the moving piece is free to do something aggressive of its own, so your opponent faces two threats created by a single move. When the uncovered line gives check, it becomes a discovered check, and the moving piece can do almost anything it likes — including capturing a defended queen.
How to spot it
- Find your own pieces standing on a line between your rook, bishop or queen and an enemy target.
- Ask what that blocking piece could do if it were free to move anywhere: capture, check, or attack a second target.
- Double check — where both the moving piece and the uncovered piece give check — forces a king move and nothing else.
The mistake to avoid
Moving the front piece somewhere harmless. The discovery is only worth as much as the threat the moving piece creates on its way out.
Train the ones you actually miss
Solving a motif in isolation is useful, but the tactics that cost you rating are the ones you walked past in your own games. Run a free game review and Chesslume turns your own mistakes into puzzles, so you train the pattern you personally keep missing rather than a random one.
Other tactical motifs
- Fork puzzles — One piece, two targets, and your opponent can only save one.
- Pin puzzles — A pinned piece is on the board but not in the game.
- Skewer puzzles — A pin backwards: the big piece is in front, and it has to move.
- Hanging piece puzzles — The most common way games are decided is the simplest one.
- Deflection puzzles — The defender is doing a job. Give it a better offer.
- Back-rank mate puzzles — The pawns that shelter the king are also the walls of its cell.
- Mate in 2 puzzles — Two moves, no escape, every defence covered.