New answers tagged checkmate
1
This is a simple question that deserves a simple answer: This position is neither checkmate or stalemate.
Checkmate is where the player to move has no legal moves and is in check. Stalemate is where the player to move has no legal moves and is not in check. In this position, either player would have legal moves if it was their turn, so neither definition ...
4
When your king is in check, it has 3 options to escape - either interpose a piece, run away, or capture the attacker. In this position there is no intervening square, so interposing is impossible even if a piece were available to do so. Nor can the king run away since it is blocked by the edge of the board and its own pieces, and the remaining empty escape ...
16
Your king is mated when all three of the following conditions are met:
You cannot capture the attacker.
You cannot block the check by interposing a piece between the king and the attacker.
There is no safe square to which your king can flee.
The white queen cannot be captured by the black king because she is protected by the bishop on h2. (A king may not ...
32
The queen is protected by the bishop on h2, so the black king cannot take the queen. Nothing else can take the queen and the queen covers b8 and d7.
1
Against the Bird Opening (1.f4), black can play the From Gambit which threatens a kind of fool's mate:
[FEN ""]
1.f4 e5 2.fxe5 d6 3.exd6 Bxd6 4.Nc3? Qh4+ 5.g3 Qxg3+ 6.hxg3 Bxg3#
Instead of 4.Nc3, which is just an example move, 4.d4 and 4.g3 are common.
2
The Kieninger Trap in the Budapest gambit has trapped numerous amateurs but even some masters over the years. It involves a similar mating pattern to those found in some of the other answers. There are only so many ways to blunder a king early in the game.
[FEN ""]
1.d4 Nf6
2.c4 e5
3.dxe5 Ng4
4.Bf4 Nc6
5.Nf3 Bb4+
6.Nbd2 Qe7
7.a3 Ngxe5
8.axb4 ...
2
Here’s a simple example which I always like.
[FEN ""]
1. d4 e5 2. Bg5 Qxg5 3. Qc1 Qxc1#
3
Using the syzygy tablebases by just putting some B+N position in, and looking for the note that says what the longest one is, we can find that it's
8/8/8/6B1/8/8/4k3/1K5N b - - 0 1
with a DTM (depth to mate, in plies/half moves) of 65.
This is probably due to the discoordination of all of white's pieces
2
Due to prior knowledge, I scoured these three chessgames.com collections that I knew of. I found two games that match.
They do fit the bill of having the promoted knight protecting a rook. However, they're quite longer than 20 moves, are in the endgame, and have different material balances from what you think. It does help that they are recent games, ...
2
What was the best move in this position for white?
QxQ is the best move. White is a piece up so the best plan is to try and exchange pieces. Once only the pawns and white's last piece are left the win becomes very easy. QxQ is a great way to start implementing that plan.
Could white have won this game?
White has more than enough material to deliver ...
0
Yes, white can win this game. All you have to do is exchanging the pieces. Think like that;
For example, you have 1000 soldier and the opponent have 950 soldiers. You do not know that you are going to win this war or not. Think about 51 to 1. You definitely win the war. When you are piece up, the main strategy is exchanging the pieces as much as you can. If ...
7
A rule of thumb for these kind of positions that capturing an officer will allow a pair of pawns to pass one another and potentially promote. Capturing a pawn will allow three other pawns to become passed. So you can see that there is easily enough missing pieces to have created this position.
If the issue is that pawns have moved sideways, then the ...
36
Even though the board is upside down, the position is still easily legal.
[FEN ""]
[startply "86"]
[StartFlipped "1"]
1. a4 h5 2. g4 h4 3. Bg2 Rh5 4. gxh5 h3 5. h6 e5 6. Nf3 Bc5 7. Nxe5 hxg2 8. h4 Ne7 9. h5 g5 10. Rh4 Ng6 11. Rf4 g4 12. Rxf7 Qh4 13. e3 Bxe3 14. Ke2 a5 15. f4 Qf2+ 16. Kd3 Nc6 17. b4 b5 18. bxa5 Rxa5 19. Rf8+ Ke7 ...
1
I nearly agree with @hkBst, who says that one should determines the beneficiary at the beginning of the mated player's turn, by asking who would be able to actually capture the king (in the pre-Persian format). This would certainly give a unique result.
The removal of the king may also cause discovered checkmates to happen to as many a 4 other players in the ...
3
Q: How long is the longest forced checkmate in chess?
A: We will probably never know, but a naive extrapolation from known data might suggest about 18 billion moves.
50/75 move-rules don't apply
Firstly, let's definitively remove one distraction: 50-moves (or 75-moves). The Codex for Chess Problem Compositions states:
Footnote 12.
Presently the rules ...
3
Here you can find a mate in 555 moves by Lutz Neweklowsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70FmRGd4qqU&ab_channel=LutzNeweklowsky
In this kind of chesscompositions we don't have a 50-move-rule.
Kind regards,
Lutz Neweklowsky
2
When your King is attacked, it can escape in any of three ways.
it can flee, i.e.move out of check
interpose a piece between itself and the attacker
capture the attacking piece.
In your example, the King cannot move out of check since it has no escape square, being cut off by the edge of the board and its own pieces, cannot interpose a piece since there's ...
11
The original goal of chess was to capture the opponent’s king. The idea of “checkmate” follows this: you may as well call the game won/lost once capture next turn is inevitable. So you’re checkmated if whatever you do, your king would get captured next turn — i.e. if every move you can make would leave your king still in check.
In your example: There are ...
80
To get out of check, the king needs to move to a square that isn't attacked by any opposing pieces, or you need to capture/block attacking pieces such that the king is no longer under attack on its current square.
Since the queen is attacking the king and both of the unblocked squares it can move to, white needs to capture the queen to get out of check here. ...
7
White can't move their rook from d2 as your bishop at g5 will capture the white's king.
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