Common Checkmates in Chess

Attacking and capturing pieces are certainly important aspects of chess, but the ultimate goal is to checkmate your opponent. The number of possible checkmates is nearly infinite, but some checkmate formations appear much more often than others. Here are some of the most common that you should seek to develop or exploit.

The castled king is both protected and trapped by the pawns on the rank immediately in front of the king. A back rank mate is a checkmate delivered by a rook or queen that reaches the back rank of the board. If the rook or queen cannot be captured or interposed, the wall of pawns in front of the king prevents escape, resulting in checkmate.

In the sequence shown here, white’s two rooks focus a lot of strength at d8 because black has only one piece (the black rook at h8) that can defend d8. White can exploit this advantage by moving one rook to d8, creating check. Black will take this rook with its own rook, but then white will just take that rook with its second rook. White sacrifices its first rook to gain checkmate with its second.

A player can defend against rank mate in two ways. The first is to move up one of the pawns in front of the king, giving the king a kind of escape hatch from the back rank. The other is to make sure to keep the back line defended by as many pieces as your opponent has attacking it.

Driving your queen deep into your opponent’s territory can be devastating, especially if your queen is attacking your opponent’s king. A corner mate is delivered by a queen at or near the corner of the board. The corner mate exploits the fact that the sides of the board and your opponent’s other pieces can make it impossible for a king to escape a queen’s attack. Corner mates are most often launched against castled kings.

In the sequence shown here, the white queen attacks the black king in the upper right corner. Since the white queen is protected by the bishop at d4, the black king cannot capture the queen. Note that Qg7 does not lead to checkmate, as black can play Qxg7, capturing the white queen.

The wall of pawns in front of the castled king normally defends the king from a frontal attack. Disrupting defensive pawns involves the sacrifice of a piece or pieces in exchange for one or more of the pawns in front of the opponent’s king. Capturing these pawns can expose the opponent’s king to attack and eventual checkmate.

In the examples shown here, white sacrifices its queen to disrupt black’s pawns. Though this costs white the powerful queen, it exposes the black king to a frontal attack. The white rook, in tandem with the white knight at e7, delivers the final blow to the vulnerable king. Always remember that the goal of chess is to checkmate the opponent—it’s worth sacrificing pieces if it assures you of a checkmate.

If a player falls behind and seems very likely to lose the game, the player can resign, or give up the game, by physically knocking over his or her own king.