Basic Chess Checkmating Patterns
Checkmating
Checkmating occurs when it becomes impossible for the king to find a way out of a check. When this happens, the match is over. In chess, the king is never captured. There are several basic checkmating patterns the beginner should learn.
Queen and Rook
The queen and rook make a powerful team. They can checkmate the king by driving him to the end of the board. Because the king can only move one square at a time, there is no way it can escape the threat of the queen and rook attacking two adjacent squares at the edge of the board.
The black king is in square d8. The white rook is in h8 and the white queen occupies f7. It is a checkmate.
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Two Rooks
Because rooks have more limited movement than the queen, this takes more maneuvering than queen-rook As in the last strategy, you force the enemy king to the edge where it can be cornered. Check the king with one rook and then the other. He can only move one square at a time. Eventually he will end up at the edge to be checkmated.
Example Checkmating
Below is an example of trapping the king with two rooks.
Figure 1
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Figure 2
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Figure 3
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Figure 4
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Figure 5
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Figure 6
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Other Checkmating Patterns
It is possible to checkmate the enemy king with only one queen or one rook; however the help of another, less powerful piece is needed. Your king becomes a valuable offensive weapon in this regard.
Checkmating with the queen-king.
You can deliver a checkmate with the queen while the king guards possible escape squares or protects the queen from capture.
In the figure below, the black king is marked "x." Both b8 and a7 are under attack so he cannot move to those squares. Nor can he capture the white queen since the white king is defending her.
A B C D E F G H 8 X K 7 Q 6 5 4 3 2 1
Checkmate!
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Checkmate again!
Checkmating with the rook-king.
Your rook attacks the enemy king while your king guards possible escape routes. The king is better for this supporting role than a bishop since he can move in all directions whereas a bishop traverses the board only diagonally.
Below the white king is checkmated; the black rook and king attack all the squares he can move to.
A B C D E F G H 8 7 6 5 4 K 3 2 X R 1