A deflection forces an enemy piece away from a job it is doing: guarding a square, protecting another piece, or holding a file or rank. Once the defender is gone, whatever it was guarding falls. Every puzzle on this page involves a deflection, comes from a real game and is matched to your puzzle rating.
Every defender has duties. A rook on the back rank stops a mate, a knight covers a key square, a bishop protects a loose rook. A deflection gives that defender something it cannot ignore: a capture it must recapture, a check it must answer, or an attack it must meet. Whichever way it responds, it leaves its post.
The deflecting move often costs material, so it only works if what the defender was guarding is worth more than what you gave. That is why deflections so often end in mate or in winning the queen.
The easiest defenders to deflect are the ones doing two jobs at once. White: king g1, queen b3, rook e1, pawns a2, b2, f2, g2, h2. Black: king g8, rook d8, knight d5, pawns a7, b7, f7, g7, h7. White to move.
The rook on d8 is the only defender of the knight on d5, and it is also the only piece guarding e8. White plays 1.Qxd5. If Black recaptures with 1...Rxd5, the back rank is left unguarded and 2.Re8 is checkmate. So Black cannot take back and simply stays a knight down. One piece had two jobs, and a single capture exposed both.
A defender like this is often called overloaded. Look for it whenever the same enemy piece turns up twice when you count who defends what.
The two are easy to mix up. A deflection pulls a piece away from a square it needs to stay on. A decoy pulls a piece onto a square where it will be hit. Many combinations use both, and both usually start with a sacrifice. For solving, the question is the same: which enemy piece is holding the position together, and what forcing move makes it move?
Start from the win you want. Find the mate, the loose piece or the queen you could take if one enemy piece were not there. That piece is the target. Then list the forcing moves that touch it: captures it must answer, checks it must block or capture, and attacks on it or on the piece it guards.
Back rank defenders are the classic target. A rook or queen that alone guards the first rank cannot leave it to capture something without allowing mate, so anything you offer it off that rank is effectively safe from it.
The first is deflecting a piece that has a second defender behind it, so the square is still covered when the first one leaves. The second is offering material that the defender can simply decline, when the position needed a move it could not refuse. The third is missing that the defender can leave with a threat of its own, often a check, and come back in time.
For each puzzle, name the defender and its job before you move. If you are stuck, the first hint shows which piece to move and the second shows the move. After you solve, the full line appears beside the board, so check which duty the defender dropped. Deflections often set up a back rank mate, and a deflected piece often leaves another open to a fork.
For mixed tactics at your level, use Puzzle Training. For speed, try Puzzle Storm, and for repetition of a fixed set, the Woodpecker Method. Elo Maxing rates you on every tactical motif and serves the weakest next, and Pattern Drill builds practice from the patterns your own games show you miss. For more on training tactics motif by motif, read the Elo Maxing guide.
A tactic that forces an enemy piece away from a square, piece or line it is defending, so that what it defended can be won.
A defender doing two jobs at once. Deflecting it from one job leaves the other undone.
Deflection pulls a piece away from where it needs to be. A decoy pulls a piece onto a square where it will be attacked.
Often, but not always. A check or a direct attack on the defender can deflect it without giving up material.