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I was playing chess with a buddy, and I put him in check. On the following move, without moving his king out of check, he moved a rook to put me in checkmate.

My questions are as follows:

  1. Can he do that and leave his king still in check?

  2. Even though I'm in checkmate, can I take his king to win the game?

  3. Is checkmate an automatic win (meaning no moves can follow), or can I still "try"?

  4. If it was an illegal move, where do we resume?

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    The basic principle of chess is once you're checkmated, it doesn't matter what you do because the opponent will kill your king in the next move. However, by long standing convention, we don't play it till that point and consider the game finished when checkmated. So, in accordance with this principle, if someone left his king in check that would mean you would kill his king in the next move. To get around all this, we just make those moves illegal.
    – Saikat
    Jul 16, 2016 at 5:56

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  1. No, this is not legal.
  2. Not relevant since 1 is illegal.
  3. Checkmate is a win and no moves can follow.
  4. You go back to illegal move and correct if its a friendly game, I don't know what the official rules are for when a player makes an illegal move.
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  • There are penalties in official chess matches
    – Jimmy360
    Jul 15, 2016 at 21:03
  • Now your answer to #3, is that correct "no moves can follow", or correct "i can still try"?
    – Buck_x20x
    Jul 15, 2016 at 23:15
  • @Buck_x20x checkmate is an automatic win. if you still have legal moves it's not checkmate
    – undergroundmonorail
    Jul 16, 2016 at 0:07
  • Is it illegal if the opponent didn't see the check and didn't realise he's in check ?
    – Saikat
    Jul 16, 2016 at 5:53
  • The rules on this vary. Most tournaments if it's noticed within 10 moves, then you go n back and correct the illegal move and the offender gets a time penalty. Doing it multiple times leads to a loss. For rapid/blitz events its an automatic loss.
    – Jubin Chheda
    Jul 16, 2016 at 7:18

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