Learn Chess with Puma Beginning Checkmating Lessons

If you checkmate you win, and since the skills you learn about checkmating can be used to mate and to help avoid mate,  learning about checkmates and attacking actually helps your offensive and defensive skills. That is why we will be showing you lots of ways to checkmate.

In this set of positions we use a far advanced pawn on the F6 square as the defender for the queen to mate on G7.  In a lot of our lessons including this one we will work backwards showing the easiest answer first then doing mate in twos and threes.

(Note: every square has a name,presently the black king is on the G8 square, see diagram at top of article if confused)

Can you see the move for white to checkmate? 

If you thought it was moving the queen up to G7 you are correct!

 Now that we know that the goal is mating on G7

we can try to solve a couple of mating problems around this theme. 

In this example Black who has grown an extra rook from the last example is threatening to mate us at the A1 square, so we must act fast, luckily we have mate in two and it is similar to the last diagram. 

Can you Find the first Move?

 If you chose QH6+ checking the black  king and forcing it back to G8 only to be mated next move, you are correct. This is the same mate as before, and we will show it here.

 You can see the king only has one move, we can see the results below.

Lets review what we have learned before moving on the grand finale-- a mate in three!

• A far advanced pawn can help mate the opponents king
• The Queen or sometimes another piece works in combination with the pawn
• We can win even when behind in material or when we have less pieces
• Sometime the Queen must be moved into position to make the mate
• It is helpful when we move forward with check, since then we keep the attack and don't allow the other player to get any attack  of their own going. 

 Now for the advanced problem, it ends the exact same way as the last diagram, but we have to look one more move deep to find the solution, again everything is done with check 

 Now the goal is to force the king over to H8 so we can use the mate in two we just learned.

Can you see the right move?

A brilliant move by white, now black's king must take the rook, setting up a mate in two as shown in the above diagrams. 

We will re-show the diagrams below, watch as black is mated again.

We will be publishing new lessons and chess books, so come back often, if you want lessons, online or in Seattle contact us at 800-609-6211 or use our contact form.

You can also purchase the excellent Chessmate Wallet a magnetic portable chess-set which was used in the Bobby Fisher movie and fun and collectible Chessheads trading cards both of which we distribute.