Seven mating patterns, and how to spot them on the board
Many mates in real games repeat the same few pictures: the same pieces, the same squares, the same trapped king. Here are the seven classic checkmate patterns to recognise, both to give mate and to see it coming against your own king.
Why learn checkmate patterns
Strong players do not work out every mate from scratch. They recognise a picture: a king in the corner behind its own pawns, a knight close to it, a rook that can reach the edge. Once the picture is in your head, the search is short. You know which pieces you need and where they must go, and you only have to check that the defender has no way out.
For each pattern below: the pieces that give mate, where the king stands and what blocks it. Three come with a puzzle from a real game, from the Lichess puzzle database: look for the mate before you read on.
Two mates you may already know
The back-rank mate
A rook or queen gives mate on the last rank to a king shut in by its own pawns, typically on g8 behind f7, g7 and h7. It has its own article on this blog, the back-rank mate, with its signals, two puzzles and the pawn move that protects your king.
Légal’s mate
An opening trap that ends with a bishop and two knights. Black pins a knight to the queen with a bishop, White gives up the queen anyway, and the minor pieces finish the job. In the Göring Gambit, a line of the Scotch Game, it ends 9.Bxf7+ Ke7 10.Nd5#: the bishop on f7 takes e6 and e8 from the king, the knight on e5 guards the bishop and covers d7, and the knight on d5 gives the check. Our article on Scotch Game traps shows the whole trap, move by move.
The smothered mate
In a smothered mate, a knight checks a king that cannot move because its own pieces fill every square around it. The usual picture is a king on h8, with its own pieces on g8, g7 and h7: a knight on f7 gives mate. The knight is the piece for the job: its check cannot be blocked, and it comes from a square the king cannot reach.
The best-known way to set it up is called Philidor’s Legacy. A double check from the queen and the knight drives the king into the corner, then the queen is sacrificed on g8, so that the rook has to take it and fill the last free square.
1.Nh6+ is a double check: the knight checks from h6, and by leaving f7 it opens the diagonal of the queen on d5. Only a king move can answer two checks, and the king has one square, 1…Kh8. Then 2.Qg8+!: the queen gives itself up on g8, where the knight guards it, so only the rook can take it, 2…Rxg8. Now the rook on g8, the knight on g7 and the pawn on h7 wall the king in, and 3.Nf7# is mate.
Black is a rook up, so only a mate will do, and only from h6 does the knight also guard g8. After 1.Ng5+ Kh8, for example, the queen sacrifice no longer works, and 2.Nf7+ Rxf7 just loses the knight: Stockfish rates Black as winning.
When the enemy king sits in a corner surrounded by its own pieces, look at every square from which a knight could check it.
The Arabian mate and the hook mate
In these two mates a rook and a knight work together. In the Arabian mate, the king is in a corner, say on h8. The rook gives mate from h7, right next to it, and the knight on f6 does two jobs: it guards the rook, so the king cannot take it, and it covers g8. The rook covers g7 and the rest of the h-file.
In the hook mate, the rook again checks from the square next to the king and the knight guards it, but now a pawn guards the knight, and the king’s own pawns take its last escape squares. For example, a black king on f7 with its pawns on f6 and g7 is mated by a white rook on f8, a knight on g6 and a pawn on f5. When a rook check next to the king looks useless because the king could take the rook, ask whether a knight could guard that square.
Anastasia’s mate
Here a knight and a rook or queen trap the king on the edge of the board. The picture: a black king on h7, its own pawn on g7, and a white knight on e7 that covers g8 and g6. The king is stuck on the h-file, and a rook or queen that reaches the file gives mate. It often starts with a sacrifice on h7 that pulls the king out of the corner.
1.Qxh7+! gives up the queen. The king must take it, 1…Kxh7, since g8 is covered by both the queen and the knight. Now the picture is complete: king on h7, pawn on g7, knight on e7. 2.Rh5# swings the rook along the fifth rank to the h-file, and the king has no square left.
Any other move leaves Black, who is ahead in material, better. The sacrifice works because the knight was already in place. When you see a knight on e7 and a king on h8 behind its pawns, look for a way to open the h-file.
Boden’s mate
In Boden’s mate, two bishops give mate on two crossing diagonals, often against a king that has castled on the queenside, on c8, with its own pieces on d8 and d7 in the way. One bishop checks from a6, through b7, and the other covers b8 and c7 from the h2–b8 diagonal. It often begins with a capture on c6 that pulls the b7 pawn away.
1.Qxc6+ takes the black queen with check, and Black’s only move is to take back with the pawn, 1…bxc6. That recapture opens b7, and 2.Ba6# is mate: the bishop checks through b7, the bishop on f4 covers b8 and c7, and Black’s own rook and knight block d8 and d7.
The lesson for the defender: with your king castled long, think twice before allowing an exchange that pulls the b7 pawn away from it.
How to make these patterns stick
- Set each picture up on a board, from both sides, until you can place the pieces from memory. Then move the king one square and see whether the mate still works.
- Name the pattern when you solve a puzzle. A knight next to a king hemmed in by its own pieces: smothered mate. A rook beside the king with a knight guarding it: Arabian or hook. Two bishops against a king castled long: Boden.
- Look at your own king with the same eyes. If your opponent could build one of these pictures around it, give it air, move the piece that blocks it, or trade the attacking knight.
- Solve mates every day, short ones first, on paper, writing the whole line before you check the answer.
Lichess has a puzzle theme for each of these mates except Légal’s, a free way to see many examples. 300 Chess Puzzles has three themes of mates among its ten, mate in one, mate in two and back-rank mates, each with a short lesson on the signals and thirty puzzles from about 600 to 1800 Elo. For a few puzzles at your level every day, The Knight’s Notebook brings sixty a month in a PDF to print.
To find the forcing moves that lead to these pictures, read our article on how to find a mate in two. With only a few pieces left, our article on basic checkmates shows how to mate with a queen, a rook or two rooks.