Checkmate pattern

{{Chess diagram small In ''Anastasia's mate'', a knight and rook team up to trap the opposing king between the side of the board on one side and a friendly piece on the other. Often, the queen or a rook is first sacrificed along the a- or h-file to achieve the position. A bishop can be used instead of a knight to the same effect (see Greco's mate). This checkmate gets its name from the novel Anastasia und das Schachspiel by Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse, but the novelist took the chess position from an essay by Giambattista Lolli. ==Anderssen's mate==

{{Chess diagram small In ''Anderssen's mate'' (named for Adolf Anderssen), the rook or queen is supported by a diagonally attacking piece such as a pawn or bishop as it checkmates the opposing king along the eighth . Sometimes a distinction is drawn between Anderssen's mate, where the rook is supported by a pawn (which itself is supported by another piece, as in the diagram), and ''Mayet's mate'', where the rook is supported by a distant bishop. ==Arabian mate==

{{Chess diagram small In the Arabian mate, the knight and the rook team up to trap the opposing king on a corner of the board. The rook sits on a square adjacent to the king both to prevent escape along the diagonal and to deliver checkmate while the knight sits two squares away diagonally from the king to prevent escape on the square next to the king and to protect the rook. In addition to being among the most common mating patterns, the Arabian mate is also an important topic in the context of history of chess for being mentioned in an ancient Arabic manuscript dating from the 8th century CE. The pattern is also derived from an older form of chess in which the knight and the rook were the two most powerful pieces in the game, before chess had migrated to Europe and the queen given its current powers of movement. ==Back-rank mate==

{{Chess diagram small The back-rank mate occurs when a rook or queen checkmates a king that is blocked in by its own pieces (usually pawns) on the first or eighth rank. ==Balestra mate==

{{Chess diagram small The balestra mate involves a queen cutting off the king's escape both diagonally and vertically whilst having a bishop deliver checkmate. ==Bishop and knight mate==

The bishop and knight mate is one of the four basic checkmates and occurs when the king works together with a bishop and knight to the opponent king to the corner of the board. The bishop and knight endgame can be difficult to master: some positions may require up to 34 moves (if both sides play perfectly) before checkmate can be delivered. ==Blackburne's mate==

''Blackburne's mate'' is named for Joseph Henry Blackburne and is a rare method of checkmating. The checkmate utilizes enemy pieces (typically a rook) and/or the edge of the board, together with a friendly knight, to confine the enemy king's sideways escape, while a friendly bishop pair takes the remaining two diagonals off from the enemy king. Threatening Blackburne's mate, which sometimes goes in conjunction with a queen sacrifice, can be used to weaken Black's position. ==Blind swine mate==

The blind swine mate pattern's name is attributed to Polish master Dawid Janowski who referred to on a player's 7th rank as "swine". In the first diagram with White to play, White can force checkmate as follows: :1. Rxg7+ Kh8 :2. Rxh7+ Kg8 :3. Rbg7 In the first diagrammed position, the rooks on White's 7th rank can start on any two files from a to e, and although black pawns are commonly present as shown, they are not necessary to deliver the mate. The f8-rook is necessary to stop the king from escaping if the attacking side does not already have a piece controlling that flight square. The second diagram shows the final position after checkmate. In the book My System, Nimzowitsch refers to this type of mate as: "The seventh rank, absolute." ==Boden's mate==

{{Chess diagram small ''Boden's mate'' involves two attacking bishops on criss-crossing diagonals delivering checkmate to a king obstructed by friendly pieces, usually a rook and a pawn. ==Corner mate==

{{Chess diagram small The corner mate is a common method of checkmating. It works by confining the king to the corner using a rook or queen with a pawn blocking the final escape square and using a minor piece to engage the checkmate. If the attacking player's king is used to confine the other king, and the checkmate is delivered by a knight, the mating pattern is called ''Stamma's mate''. ==Damiano's bishop mate==

''Damiano's bishop mate'' is a classic method of checkmating. The checkmate utilizes a queen and bishop, where the bishop is used to support the queen and the queen is used to engage the checkmate. The checkmate is named after Pedro Damiano. One can also think of similar mates like 'Damiano's knight' and 'Damiano's rook' or even 'Damiano's king' (See Queen mate below), 'Damiano's pawn' or 'Damiano's (second) queen'. ==Damiano's mate==

{{Chess diagram small ''Damiano's mate'' is a classic method of checkmating and one of the oldest. It works by confining the king with a pawn and using a queen to execute the checkmate. Damiano's mate is often arrived at by first sacrificing a rook on the h-file, then checking the king with the queen on the a-file or h-file, and then moving in for the mate. The checkmate was first published by Pedro Damiano in 1512. In Damiano's publication, he failed to place the white king on the board, which resulted in it not being entered into many chess databases due to their rejection of illegal positions. ==Double bishop mate==

{{Chess diagram small The double bishop mate is a classic method of checkmating. It is similar to Boden's mate, but the two bishops are placed on parallel diagonals. The escape squares are occupied or controlled by enemy pieces. ==Double knight mate==

The double knight mate usually involves a king being trapped behind a pawn or a group of pawns in front of it and blocked by a piece to the side. The king is then checked by a knight and forced into a position in which it can be checkmated by the other knight. ==Dovetail mate (Cozio's mate) ==

The dovetail mate is a common method of checkmating, and is also known as ''Cozio's mate'', named after a study by Carlo Cozio published in 1766. It involves trapping the black king in the pattern shown. It does not matter how the queen is supported and it does not matter which type Black's other two pieces are so long as neither is an unpinned knight. See also Swallow's tail mate. ==Epaulette mate==

The epaulette mate is, in its broadest definition, a checkmate where two parallel retreat squares for a checked king are occupied by its own pieces, preventing its escape. The most common epaulette mate involves the king on its , trapped between two rooks. The perceived visual similarity between the rooks and epaulettes, ornamental shoulder pieces worn on military uniforms, gives the checkmate its name. ;Example game • Magnus Carlsen vs. Sipke Ernst, Wijk aan Zee 2004. Carlsen, aged thirteen at the time, achieved an unusual "sideways" epaulette mate against Ernst on his way to winning the C Group at the Corus chess tournament in 2004. ==Greco's mate==

{{Chess diagram small ''Greco's mate'' is a common method of checkmating. The checkmate is named after the famous Italian checkmate cataloguer Gioachino Greco. It works by using the bishop to contain the black king by use of the black g-pawn and subsequently using the queen or a rook to checkmate the king by moving it to the edge of the board. ==Hook mate==

{{Chess diagram small The hook mate involves the use of a rook, knight, and pawn along with one enemy pawn to limit the enemy king's escape. The rook is protected by the knight, and the knight is protected by the pawn, while the pawn also attacks one of the enemy king's escape squares. ==Kill box mate==

The kill box mate is a box-shaped checkmate. The checkmate is delivered by a rook with the queen's assistance. The rook is adjacent to the king, while the queen supports the rook, being separated from it by one empty square on the same diagonal as the rook. This forms a 3 by 3 box shape, inside which the enemy king is trapped. The king could be anywhere on the board, but must have no escape squares available to him due either to being on the edge of the board or to being blocked off by friendly or enemy pieces. ==King and two bishops mate==

{{Chess diagram small The king and two bishops mate is one of the four basic checkmates. It occurs when the king with two bishops force the bare king to the corner of the board to force a possible mate. ==King and two knights mate==