Deflection: Pulling a Defender Off Its Post
Deflection is a tactic that forces or lures a defending piece away from the square or piece it is guarding, so that what it protected can be taken.
How deflection works
Many positions hold together because one piece is doing an important job: guarding a back-rank square, protecting a rook, covering a mating square. Deflection attacks the job rather than the piece. You give that defender something it must deal with somewhere else, usually a capture it has to make or a check it has to answer, and when it leaves, the thing it guarded falls.
The deflecting move is often a sacrifice. You offer a piece on a square the defender must take, or check so that it must interpose. If the defender ignores the offer, you keep the material; if it accepts, its post is empty.
Classic targets are back-rank defenders. A rook guarding the eighth rank, or a queen covering a mating square next to the king, can often be dragged away by a check or a capture elsewhere. When you see a mate that fails because of exactly one defender, the next question is how to make that defender leave.
Overloaded pieces
The easiest deflections are against overloaded pieces: a single defender guarding two things at once. If a queen protects both a bishop and a rook, capture the bishop. When the queen recaptures, the rook is undefended. The defender cannot be in two places, so one of its duties is always going to fail.
To find overloaded pieces, go through the opponent's defenders one by one and ask what each of them protects. Any piece with two jobs is a target, especially if one of those jobs is guarding a mating square.
Deflection versus decoy
The two ideas are close cousins. Deflection is about the square a piece leaves: you pull a defender away. A decoy is about the square a piece goes to: you lure it onto a square where it can be hit. Many combinations do both at once, and naming them matters less than seeing the question underneath, which is what each enemy piece is holding together. The defenders you fail to deflect in your own games are the ones worth drilling.
How to spot it
- For each enemy defender, list exactly what it protects.
- Flag any defender with two jobs: it is overloaded.
- Look for a capture or check that forces that defender to move.
- Count what falls once it leaves its post.
- Check the line where the defender declines your offer.
Try one
Work it out from the diagram first, then play it on the board or open the solution.
6
e
hExample 1
White to move and win material.
Show solution
34.Rxc6 Qxc6 35.Qxe5
Black's queen on c7 has two jobs: it defends the bishop on c6 and, along the c7-e5 diagonal, the rook on e5, which White's queen attacks. Rxc6 takes the bishop. If Black recaptures with Qxc6, the queen has left the diagonal and Qxe5 wins the rook; if Black does not recapture, White is simply a bishop up.
Position from a real game, via the Lichess puzzle database.