Planing the Check Mate

Checkmate never happens as a coincidence. You need to imagine you game plan and build up your check mate. After you plan what to do, you need to make your opponent work towards your goal. This is not as easy task because, nobody wants to be checkmated. In other words; you need “a game” in order to checkmate your opponent.

Basic Check Mate

In order to see the check mate, you need to see which piece can go where and threatens which squares. With some experience seeing possible moves of specific pieces becomes a second nature. Here is an example of a basic checkmate:

In this example white can manage a checkmate because H4 king is in the side of the chess board and only can move to 3 squares. H3 and G5 is occupied with black’s pieces. White’s F5 knight is checking and there is no square left for H4 black king to go.

As a definition, in a basic checkmate there is no pawn on the board from the maters side. Checkmate happens only with:

• Two rooks
• A rook and the king
• The queen and the king
• Two bishops and the king
• Bishops (or a bishop), knights (or a knight) and the king

Shortest Checkmates

Here, we are seeing the shortest checkmate possible. It’s also known as “the fools mate” and its a two move checkmate. These kinds of checkmates are possible but very opponent oriented. You need either a very distracted or a very inexperienced opponent. Black plays the E7 pawn one square forward. as innocent as it seems if white plays F2 pawn forward, black can always try to go for a checkmate with the queen. A little longer version of this checkmate is “the three move checkmate”. You can perform it as white. As the first move, play E2 pawn one square forward which opens the bishops and queens diagonal way. When you play this, if black opens with the F7 pawn you have a very high chance to make the three move checkmate. Rest of the checkmate goes as you play F1 to C4 and black plays. If bishops way to F7 is not interrupted, you play queen H5 and voila! Checkmate in three moves.

Some Examples To a Normal Checkmate

To figure out the checkmate which will come in the next move, you need to find the right check. Here white will play the right check to close out the game.

White plays H2 to E5 captures E5 pawn. Black has made a mistake by cornering his own king and now the king has no where to go. Checkmate!

Closing out the game is the satisfying part of the chess. Planning the game, executing moves, manipulating you opponent is the thing that makes this game very exciting and competitive. Just because nature of the game does not require any physical power, even if you don’t feel like moving a finger, you can still play the game by telling your opponent which piece goes where. Just like Ron Wesley did in Harry Potter.

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