Checkmate

What checkmate is

Check means your king stands on a square that an enemy piece attacks. Checkmate means your king is in check and you have no legal move that ends the check. The game stops at that moment, and the side that gave the check wins. The king is never taken off the board: the rules forbid any move that leaves your own king in check, so a king with no escape is already beaten, and capturing it would be one move past the end of the game. The word itself is usually traced to the Persian shah mat, "the king is helpless", which is exactly the position it describes.

Three positions look alike from a distance and mean completely different things:

1. 1.Check: the king is attacked, and you have at least one legal reply. You must play one of them right now.
2. 2.Checkmate: the king is attacked, and no legal reply exists. You have lost.
3. 3.Stalemate: the king is not attacked, but you have no legal move at all. The game is a draw.

The last two are the ones beginners mix up, and the mix-up costs half a point: a player with an extra queen who traps the enemy king without checking it has drawn a won game. The full comparison, with a position where one queen move mates and the other stalemates, is in stalemate vs checkmate.

The three ways out of check

When your king is in check, the rules allow exactly three kinds of reply, and a useful habit is to run through them in the same order every time:

1. 1.Run: move the king to a square that no enemy piece attacks.
2. 2.Block: put one of your own pieces between the attacker and the king. This only works against a rook, bishop or queen attacking from a distance; a knight's check and a pawn's check cannot be blocked.
3. 3.Capture: take the checking piece, with any piece, including the king itself if the attacker stands next to it and nothing defends it.

In the diagram, White has all three. The king can step to d1 or f1, the knight can drop in on e2, and the bishop on a4 can take the rook outright. Checkmate is the position where you go down the same list and every line fails: the squares around the king are attacked or filled by its own pieces, no piece can interpose, and the attacker is defended or out of reach. One special case: a double check, where one move uncovers two attackers at once, can only be answered by moving the king, because no single block or capture deals with both.

Five common mating patterns

Five mate patterns cover most games below club level: back-rank mate, scholar's mate, queen-and-king mate, the two-rook ladder mate, and smothered mate. Each one below has a diagram, the pieces it needs, and either the move that prevents it or the mistake that spoils it.

1. Back-rank mate

The most common mate in chess. After castling, the king sits behind three unmoved pawns, and those pawns become a wall. If the last defender of the back rank leaves or is traded off, a rook or queen arrives on the eighth rank with check, and the king cannot step forward because its own pawns are in the way. The diagram shows the bare version. The defence is to give the king an escape square in advance, usually by moving the h-pawn one step, once your rooks leave the first rank. Ask before every rook move whether your back rank still has a guard.

2. Scholar's mate: the four-move trap

Scholar's mate is 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Qxf7#. At the start of the game the pawn on f7 is guarded only by the king, so a queen on h5 and a bishop on c4 aim at the same weak point, and 4.Qxf7# is mate if Black ignores the threat. It ends thousands of beginner games. Defending it is simple once you know it: after 2.Qh5, play 2...Nc6 to guard e5, then answer 3.Bc4 with 3...g6, attacking the queen, or 3...Qe7, covering f7. As White, do not build your opening on it. Against anyone who has seen the trick, the early queen gets chased across the board while Black develops with gain of time, which breaks the opening principles that win games in the long run.

3. Queen and king vs king: box the king to the edge, then mate

This is the mate you play when a pawn has promoted to a queen against a lone king. From any position it is forced in at most ten moves. A queen cannot checkmate a king in the open on her own; she needs the help of her king. The method has two stages. First, use the queen to box the enemy king towards an edge, keeping a knight's move away from it so it can never attack her. Then walk your own king up until it stands two squares from the enemy king, and deliver mate on the edge with the queen protected by the king, as in the diagram. The one danger is stalemate: a queen that takes away every square without giving check draws the game on the spot. Leave the trapped king one legal square until the move that actually mates.

4. Two-rook ladder mate

Two rooks, or a rook and a queen, can force mate without any help from the king. One rook takes a rank away from the enemy king, the other gives check on the next rank, and the king has to step back towards the edge. Then the rooks swap roles, rung by rung, until the king stands on the last rank and the final check has no answer. The only thing that can go wrong is leaving a rook within reach of the enemy king; when it is attacked, slide it along its rank to the far side of the board and carry on.

5. Smothered mate

The knight is the one piece whose check cannot be blocked, and it jumps over anything in the way. So a king packed into a corner by its own pieces is in danger from a knight alone: no square to run to, nothing to block, and the knight itself often out of reach. The classic way to reach the diagram is a queen sacrifice: with the black king on h8 and a knight already on f7 or h6, the queen goes to g8 with check, the rook is forced to capture it, and the knight lands on f7 for mate. Smothered mate needs three things: the enemy king on a corner or edge square, its own pieces on every neighbouring square, and a knight giving check. It is prevented by one move: give the king a flight square, usually by moving the rook or a pawn beside it.

How checkmate is written

Checkmate is written with a hash sign after the move: Qxf7#, Rd8#. A plain check gets a plus sign, Qh5+. Some older books use ++ or the word "mate" instead, but # is the standard symbol today. The result follows on the scoresheet: 1-0 if White delivered the mate, 0-1 if Black did. Every other symbol on a scoresheet is covered in the chess notation guide.

Find the mate in one

Position: White queen on d1, Black king on g8 behind its own pawns on f7, g7 and h7, and no black piece on the back rank. White to move. Find the mate in one from the patterns above and play it.

How to find mates in your own games

Three habits do most of the work. After every move, look at the enemy king and count its free squares; a king with none is one check away from mate, and a king with one is one quiet move away. When you are ahead in material, trade pieces and push the enemy king towards an edge, where every pattern on this page lives. And before any quiet move in a winning position, run the escape test from the other side: if your opponent's king is not in check and has no move, you have just stalemated them.

For practice, short games with the king already exposed teach mates faster than long games that end in resignation. Zapp Chess games start at a curated middlegame position with the armies already developed, and a game ends the moment one side is checkmated or goes two points of material ahead, so every game is a few moves of checks, captures and mating threats. Install the app and play on your phone.

Checkmate questions

Keep going: chess rules, stalemate vs checkmate and chess strategies for beginners.