[Puzzle Road] A checkmate in 7 moves! (P11)

Welcome to puzzle road!

It’s very important in chess to visualize many moves in its mind to check if some of them are good. Moreover, you will need to imagine all the variants of each move and find the following best moves. In a puzzle, it’s naturally easier by solving a puzzle, because after each move, you know if you played the right move or not and you have a topic for it.

In a game, you will need to invent new tactics every day, but you can still use again the tactics you had learned in the past! Here, I will show you a beautiful checkmate in 7 moves that I played in a game against a 2000 player!

11/ Chasing the king! (Topic: checkmate in 7 moves)

First move: Bishop x f7 + (!!)

Exactly! Black has not developed his pieces and his King is only protected by a few pawns! Let’s sacrifice the bishop to open the castle and coming checkmate the king!

Second move: Knight g5 + !

Let’s come with the Knight to develop after it the Queen and continue our attack! Remember, that the perfect checkmate is made with 3 pieces. Continue developing your pieces to have a chance to attack the king! The black king cannot go in the middle of the board: it’s too dangerous. He comes on the g7-square to be “protected” by the two pawns left.

Third move: Queen f3!

Indeed, now we control two times the f7-square, which means that we can attack the king with our queen. Black cannot control this square a second time with a piece! We have a clear advantage! Let’s go for a checkmate!

Fourth move: Queen f7 + !

Logical move: let’s take the square directly!

Fifth move: Bishop c1!

Now we put our Bishop on the same diagonal than the black king, which does give us the possibility to check him by moving our Knight! Moreover, we can't checkmate if the king does tke our Knight! I’m happy that my opponent didn’t give up because the following checkmate is beautiful!

Sixth move: Queen x h7 + !

Excellent! The black king is now on the side of the white pawns and has only one possible move!

Seventh move: Queen h3# !

Checkmate! GG!

Excellent if you did find these moves and could play them in your mind before watching the solution in this blog!

See you tomorrow for the next puzzle!
@Kyu13

More blogs written by @Kyu13:
The main question: How to become a stronger player?
The Scotch Game: A good opening?
Reach 2000 with this trick used by GMs!

Puzzle Road:
[Puzzle Road] Attack, Block and Take! (P1)
[Puzzle Road] Check the king for a good promotion! (P2)
[Puzzle Road] Bishops vs. Pawns: fight for a draw! (P3)
[Puzzle Road] Go out of my way! (P4)
[Puzzle Road] Unbelievable, I missed that! (P5)
[Puzzle Road] A checkmate in remembrance of Bobby Fischer! (P6)
[Puzzle Road] Target and take! (P7)
[Puzzle Road] A checkmate to win 1 of 15 games... (P8)
[Puzzle Road] Pin-Pong! (P9)
[Puzzle Road] 2 Brilliant moves and 1 Brilliant News! (P10)