Discovered Attack Chess Puzzles

About discovered attack puzzles

A discovered attack occurs when a piece moves and reveals an attack by another piece behind it. The moving piece can simultaneously create its own threat, forcing the opponent to deal with two dangers at once. Discovered attacks are devastatingly effective because they are often impossible to both defend simultaneously. These puzzles train you to spot positions where your pieces are aligned — or can be aligned — to create devastating revealed threats. Practising discovered attack puzzles sharpens your ability to see 'through' your own pieces and to position them for maximum effect. This motif appears frequently in games at all levels and is a fundamental part of tactical pattern recognition.

How to train discovered attack

A discovered attack is a shape, not a sequence. Once you can spot the shape you will find the move in seconds instead of calculating from scratch, so train for recognition speed: glance, name the pattern, then verify.

Questions

How many discovered attack puzzles are there?

Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.

What level is this suitable for?

Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.