Mating Patterns Simplified - Part 1
As an amateur player, I often can't remember the mating patterns if I'm shown the patterns from actual games. So I've simplified these mating patterns to remember them better in their simplest forms and hopefully to help other fellow amateur players remember the mates better too.
I've left out the really obvious ones such as back-rank mate, mating with two rooks or with a Queen + Bishop battery etc.
Anastasia's Mate
The knight needs to get to e7, then a queen sacrifice, opening the way for the rook to move in for the final kill.
The essence of Anastasia's mate is to trap the King in between one of its friendly pieces and the side of the board, as in this simple variation:
Bodin's Mate
A mate usually delivered to an opponent's queenside castled king, where the pair of bishops (or bishop and queen) deliver a criss-cross checkmate.
Arabian Mate
The knight needs to be diagonal to the king with one square in between, empty or with a piece in between, with the rook either on g8 or h7, covered by the knight. Usually carried out when the king is in the corner.
Here is an example of where the black king is not in the corner of the board but is instead obstructed by his own pieces, with a piece in between the white knight and black king.
Légal's Mate
This seems more of a specific opening mate trap, (although Légal's mate can be applied later in the game, but needs very specific circumstances) with more moving parts than the simpler mates above. Here is the original Légal vs. Saint Brie match played in Paris from the year 1750:
Let's break it down to as simple as we can get it. Needing two knights and a bishop for delivery, with the black king's 3 escape routes blocked by his own pieces:
Bishop and Rook Kingside Attack
This mate cropped up in the tactics trainer. It is such a simple mate which can easily be applied to a game, so I had to include it here so as to remember it. Here it is:
Just as long as the g6 and f7 squares are occupied (f2 and g3 for white). This seems such a simple and deadly mate to know. Not sure if it has a specific name or not yet? Here it is stripped down to its most simplistic form:
Bishop and Knight Kingside Attack
Here's one more interesting checkmate pattern for a kingside attack that I came across in one of the chess.com lessons:
This doesn't work if the bishop was on h6 and the knight was on f6 (as if they swapped positions with each other). In this example the f8 square must be blocked to trap the king.
Main research source: Wikipedia
