#KING AND QUEEN MATE HOW TO#
#KING AND QUEEN MATE PLUS#

White: Knight (E6), Bishop (C6), King (F6) White: Knight (D6), Bishop (E7), King (E6) White: Knight (B6), Bishop (G3), King (A6) White: Knight (C6), Bishop (B7), King (C7) White: Knight (A6), Bishop (C6), King (B6) There are only 6 positions which can provide checkmate using these pieces (with minor variations which allow the bishop to move further up or down the diagonal or for reflected or rotational symmetries). (The other three are king and queen, king and rook, and the king and two bishops of different colors).

It is considered by Fine & Benko to be one of the four “basic checkmates” that is the checkmates that every chess player ought to know off by heart as they will have to work through them at some point or another. This is a challenging position to find yourself in and while you can force a checkmate with these pieces, it requires perfect play, and it may take up to thirty-three moves to achieve! That means it’s worth practicing this ending as it does turn up in competitive play.

#KING AND QUEEN MATE HOW TO#

How To Checkmate With One Bishop And A Knight?

A queen – and if it’s easy to achieve mate with a king and a rook, it’s even easier to grab checkmate with a king and a queen, the bishop is absolutely superfluous to requirements here if your opponent only has their king on the board, you shouldn’t need to move it at all unless it speeds things up a bit.As this is a super easy thing to do, we won’t touch on strategy for this. A rook – well, obviously really, as you can achieve checkmate with just a rook and a king against a king then having an extra bishop on the board just means that you’re speeding the process up a bit.A bishop on the opposite color – we know, this is technically two bishops not one bishop, but this is another very challenging checkmate to pull off.This is a very common endgame position and if you know how to manage it, you will have a big advantage in tournament play. A knight – this is a challenging checkmate to pull off and, in a minute, we shall explore some strategies for getting it right.However, there are situations where a bishop can be paired with just one other piece and they can force checkmate, and these are: The geometry of the game won’t allow even the smartest chess player to achieve checkmate with just a bishop on the board. So, if you were hoping to redefine chess by demonstrating your brilliance with a single bishop, sadly, you are going to be out of luck. However, when you pair two bishops of the same color squares – they have the same real impact as a single bishop and cannot prevent a king from moving out of check. It requires the player to have promote a pawn to a bishop (something that happens in less than 5% of pawn promotions when the pawn is underpromoted – as all the other pieces are normally more desirable for the endgame) and then to have lost all their other pieces except the bishop on the same rank as the other bishop. You can’t force checkmate with two bishops when both bishops are on the same color squares – this is a very unusual situation.You can’t force checkmate with two knights – this is more painful to learn because if you could swap for two pieces of equal value say, a rook and a pawn, you would easily win the game but two knights can’t achieve checkmate either.You can’t force checkmate with a king and a single bishop – sorry, but it’s not happening for the same reasons.You can’t force checkmate with a king and a single knight – no matter how you place these two pieces together, the opponent’s king can always slide away.

#KING AND QUEEN MATE PLUS#

In fact, there are four potential endings where your opponent has got a king on the board and you have a king plus additional material in which you can’t force a checkmate or get checkmate even if your opponent blunders like Prince Philip at a news conference. Well, as we’ve already seen, you can’t force checkmate with a bishop. Here’s why it’s impossible to checkmate with 1 bishop –

King and queen mate