Deflection vs decoy
Deflection drags a defender away from its job; a decoy lures a piece onto a bad square. Same idea, opposite direction.
Both motifs move an enemy piece against its owner's wishes, usually with a sacrifice. Deflection pulls a piece off the square or line where it was doing something important — guarding a mating square, holding a pin, defending a rook — so that once it's gone, your real threat lands. Decoy does the reverse: it tempts a piece onto a specific square where it can be forked, pinned, or checkmated.
The test for which is which: ask whether you're removing a defender from a good square (deflection) or attracting a piece to a bad one (decoy). Often a single sacrifice does both at once, which is why strong players treat them as two faces of the same 'move that piece for me' idea.
Most combinations at the club level end with one of these two — seeing that a key defender can be bribed away, or that the king can be dragged into a mating net, is the difference between a drawn position and a won one.
Sacrificing to deflect a piece that has a second, quieter way to keep defending — always check what the deflected piece was actually holding before you commit.
Related terms
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