Checkmate with Two Bishops, by Mrs Jessica Prescott
Hi everyone! It's Miss Jessica again. Ready for another mate? You can now checkmate with a king and a queen, a king and a rook, and I'm pretty sure you can do two rooks alone by yourself.
So now we are going to learn how to make a checkmate using only two bishops! By the way, you cannot make checkmate with only one bishop. Ever! See if you could figure out why! It will be an automatic draw.
In fact: you cannot force a checkmate with only one Bishop, only one knight, two knights, a pawn that's on the rook's file, and if you make a draw with a knight and a bishop, well that's totally passable since only masters know how to mate with a knight and bishop! But with two bishops, don't call it a draw.
Keep everyone together!
The key to this mate is that when the two "brother bishops" stand next to each other, they create a wall or "cage" that the enemy can not breakthrough. Moving them together, with the king always keeping a close watch, is an unstoppable plan.
Remember, don't leave anyone behind and don't go off by yourself! Notice how we are secretly creating a box around the white king? It may look more like a triangle, but these bishops work very well together.
What do you play here?
Nice work!
Now that we have trapped the king on the edge of the board, your job now is to try to get the king to go closest to YOUR OWN KING'S corner. Watch!
Your turn! It's mate in two...
Well done!
Remember: 1. Keep your family together: huddle up, then spread out on the same line. 2. Trap the king on the edge of the board. 3. Find the corner
closest to your king, and
FORCE the opponent's king to that corner! You have finished all of my Basic Checkmate articles, and you have therefore graduated from the beginner's school. You are now ready for college! I just need you to write one, superlong essay on the socio-impacts of the benefits of chess in academia and the pursuit of checkmate in the scholar's waking life...
