Checkmate Made Easy

The book draws from many positions that the author, I have used in years of chess coaching.

There is only one real way to win a game of chess. That is to the checkmate the king. Players often resign, but only because they think they will be checkmated eventually anyway.

A mate may come as a single move, like a bolt from the blue. These are mates in one. More often there is a 'mating attack' consisting of a sequence of alternating checks and check evasions. The final check is mate.

A check is the most powerful move in Chess. The most powerful way to attack is to connect a series of checks.

There are over 1000 diagrams which include mates in one, mates in two, mates in three and mates in four or more moves by each player.

Pattern recognition

There are many mating pattern which happen again and again in games. Strong players are familiar with many mating patterns and themes, through both play and study. This familiarity allows players to spot mates much quicker than they would otherwise. There is a strong correlation between playing strength and how quickly a player can find forced mates.

This book includes many positions that have been collected for coaching purposes over many years. The book is designed to help the reader to quickly become familiar with many mating patterns. It may also help refresh familiarity with mates that have been previously seen, but partly forgotten.

Positions

The positions have been invented. However they are are very similar to positions from actual play and are quite unlike composed positions. In many cases they have been simplified and have few units on the board which are not involved in the mating attack.

Diagrams

There are over 1000 large clear colour chess diagrams. In all positions White moves first and White is playing up the board. Moves are numbered from the current position, not from the start of the game.

There are different ways you can read this book.

• You can treat the positions as puzzles. You can choose the move you would play and move to the next diagram to check whether you are correct or not.
• You can simply enjoy playing through through the positions, becoming familiar with a wide range of mating patterns as you do so. You can quickly flip forwards (or backwards) through the sequence of moves in each position.
• You can combine both approaches. For example, during a first reading you could play through the positions. On a second reading you could see how many you can solve from the starting position.

The second most powerful move after check is a mate threat. The last section consists of positions in which attacking moves consist of checks and/or mate threats.

The attacker checks to force the defender to block an opponent unit that is defending mate. 1.Bf6+ Rg7 2.Re8#