Decoy — what it means in chess
Luring a piece onto a square where it can be attacked or exploited.
Luring a piece onto a square where it can be attacked or exploited.
A decoy lures an enemy piece onto a square where something bad happens to it. Where deflection drags a defender away from a duty, a decoy is about the destination: you offer material on a square precisely because that square sits under your next tactic.
The classic pattern gives a rook to pull the queen onto a knight-fork square.
[[board startfen="1q4k1/5p1p/8/3N4/8/8/8/4R1K1 w - - 0 1" pgn="1. Re8+ Qxe8 2. Nf6+ Kg7 3. Nxe8+" caption="The decoy: a rook is offered on e8 because e8 is the square the knight forks." notes="White to move. The Black queen sits safe on b8 — for now. Re8+ — the rook gives itself away with check. The queen must capture: the king has no legal flight. Qxe8 — and the queen now stands on the one square that ruins her. Nf6+ — the fork. Knight checks the king and attacks e8 at once. Kg7 — the king steps out of check, able to do nothing for the queen. Nxe8+ — the knight collects. A rook was invested; a queen came back."]]
Decoys most often target the two royal pieces — kings lured into forks and mating nets, queens lured onto forkable squares — because only they are worth more than the bait.
The Endgame Society glossary defines more than 240 chess terms — rules, notation, tactics, strategy, pawn structures, endgames, and openings — in language a beginner can act on rather than dictionary shorthand.