How to Win at Chess – Part 4: Make Checkmate

All your great moves won’t matter if you can’t close the deal. No matter how far ahead you are on board, if you can’t deliver checkmate, you don’t get the full point. Settling for a stalemate in a won position should never happen! It should sting as hard as a loss.

The first checkmate you must know is with a king and queen versus a solo king. In chess shorthand: K+Q v K. That’s because this checkmating material arises naturally after queening the lone pawn remaining on the board after you’ve simplified your tiny one-point advantage to an endgame win.

The first principal to recognize is that there is no possible checkmate you can construct in the center of the board. This means you must first drive the enemy king to any edge. Once that’s done, the cleanest checkmate among many is “The Kiss of Death” — your queen smashed indelicately against the enemy king, supported by your own monarch.

The second principal is to leave the task of herding the opponent’s king to your queen alone. This isn’t the fastest mechanism, but it’s the easiest — and least prone to stalemate. Using this method, you’ll never say “check”; only “checkmate.”

It starts by trapping the enemy king in a “jail” constructed by your queen. Take a move or two to position your queen a knight’s move away from the lone king, trapping it inside the walls of force projected orthogonally from the queen. Make sure that your own king is not jailed with the enemy!

With the enemy king confined, every move it makes will take it farther from the safety of the center, and closer to the doom of the edge. Your job with the queen is to mimic the king’s movement exactly. If it moves one space left, so does your queen. One space diagonally? Do the same with your queen: one square in exactly the same direction the enemy king just moved. The king leads; your queen follows.

It’s a dance. The Dance of Death! (*foreboding sound effects*)

In this way, one square at a time, inexorably, patiently, your queen shepherds the enemy king to an edge. The moment that happens, her job is done. Any further entrapment from her risks stalemate!

Now it’s your king’s turn. While the enemy sovereign paces back and forth in his tiny edge cell, yours strolls up to stand opposite it, ready to protect your queen. And when your king is close enough, it’s time for the denouement, the Kiss of Death. Checkmate!

If you remember that you never say “check,” only “checkmate,” the enemy king won't be able  to jump the fence that your queen has been tightening around it.

This method is how you close the deal and get a certain win. This is how you make the checkmate that gets the full point that you have rightly earned.

Previous in the series – Part 3: Bring a Bigger Army.

Next in the series – Part 5: Boost the Power of Your Pieces

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