Name of this tactic (is it just a sacrifice?)

I don't know the name of this tactic. It consists of letting the opponent take the piece he is threatening instead of moving the piece into sacrifice.



I can't find this on Puzzle Themes -> Motifs.

The is the most forcing move of all, the double check and The tactic is a called a discovered attack. There is really only 5 basic families of tactics.

1. The Double Attack
2. The Discovered Attack
3. The Pin
4. The Skewer
5. Removing the Guard (which includes many different names like decoy or deflection, interference etc).

Zwischenmatt^^

@TheKingClash said in #2:
> I would call that a deflection, luring the knight away.

The knight was doing nothing useful on a5. You can't be deflected from nothing. For a deflection tactic to occur a piece has to be doing something useful on its original square.

It is a Zwischenzug (in-between move), and since it threatens mate I suppose you could call it Zwischenmatt like Sarg0n suggested. Sometimes this is also referred to as an EST (Equal or Stronger Threat).

It is not an in-between move. I can see why there are so many mistagged puzzles.

A Zwischenzug is a move that the person solving the tactic does.

In addition often people mistakenly thinking they see a zwischenzug are the source of tactics.

Neither one is true here.

I doubt what that sacrifice is called but it is still very very good
The player should have played Kh8

@StingerPuzzles said in #5:
> The knight was doing nothing useful on a5. You can't be deflected from nothing. For a deflection tactic to occur a piece has to be doing something useful on its original square.

Why, it was attacking an entire queen! And after it was successfully deflected, it no longer played such a useful role as attacking a valuable piece! :-)

To answer the OP’s question, I think the situation is best described as a trap: an unforced move that looks appealing on the surface but that worsens the position instead.

Much like the Légal Trap, the white queen is not a part of the tactic at all: the attacking player threatens mate, and if the other player reacts by capturing an irrelevant piece, they have fallen into the trap. So this is not a sacrifice, because when you sacrifice a piece, you destroy the opponent’s pawn structure, or capture a minor but very well placed piece, or force the king to end up in just the right square etc.—the act of the sacrifice immediately provides you with some compensation, which you hope you can exploit all the way to a win.

Nice position. After 15...Na5, if White tries to move the Queen and protect the c4-Bishop, then Black gets the discovered attack with ...Bxf2+, followed by ...Qxd2+ and Black will win because of the open f-file (kingside attack). Instead, 16.Bxe6+ would get the Bishop out of the attack by the Knight so that the White Queen can then move. On 16.Rxe6, Black can play ...Kh8, and the attack on the Queen and Bishop, and the possibility of ...Bxf2+ are hard to handle.