3 checkmate techniques to end it quick – Chess strategies
“When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in
the skies of Provence.” Arthur Koestler put in words what most chess lovers feel. They see beauty in each strategic maneuver and technique employed in chess. In this article, we will be dealing with one such technique that is indispensible to chess: checkmating.
Checkmating is an art which is a necessity in chess. Many players cannot efficiently make a checkmate and wait for the endgame to arrive and the pieces to clear the board so that they can contemplate a simple checkmating strategy. Checkmating can reach an
endgame when both the players are equally strong and no one player gives the other any undue advantage.
As opposed to this, checkmating an enemy king is also possible in the opening game. This usually happens when one player is strong and the other player is comparatively weak. But in order to do this, the player needs to have prowess and skill because the
board is crowded and visualising a checkmate becomes difficult.
In this article, we have brought to you different checkmates that can be done in the opening game. They have been explained in a way that will enable you to understand and retain them easily.
Boden’s mate
This type of checkmate involves two bishops that have gone on the offensive. A player uses his two bishops in a criss-crossing manner to administer a checkmate on the enemy king. The enemy king has no way of escape as escape squares are blocked by friendly
pieces in most cases. Typically, one bishop cuts the king off from moving backwards or forwards whereas the other bishop administers the check. The friendly pieces restrict the movement of the king to other squares.
Fool’s mate
This checkmate is the fastest checkmate that is possible in the game of chess and as the name suggests, the player receiving it has to be a fool. In this case, the fool is always the white player. It occurs when the white player has advanced its pawns on
the f and g files in the first two turns in such a way that they are positioned in the form of a diagonal along with their queen. The black, in its second turn, brings its queen down to the h file, which translates into checkmating the white king along a diagonal.
This can only be possible if the first move of the black player is advancing its king’s pawn.
Scholar’s mate
This is another type of mate that occurs fairly quickly in the opening game. As opposed to the fool’s mate, the player who is mated has to be less of a fool. The scholar’s mate occurs in four moves and is administered on the black player. In the first move,
the white advances her king’s pawn, which enables her to move out her queen and bishop along the open diagonals. For the checkmate to occur, the first move of the black player has to be advancing its king’s pawn as well. In the next move, white brings out
her queen along the diagonal to the side of the board, so that it is putting the pawn in front of the black king’s bishop under attack. Black’s next step is to develop either one of the knights into the center of the board. After the white player has brought
out its bishop so that it also attacks the pawn the white queen is attacking, checkmate will be administered in the next move. The black king will be checkmate when the white queen takes the pawn in front of the king’s bishop.
These were the common checkmates related to the opening game that every beginner should know about. In order to ingrain them into memory, go ahead and play some chess!
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