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Early checkmates and traps: Fool's, Scholar's and similar mate.

Early checkmates and traps: Fool's, Scholar's and similar mate.

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MF972
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This is the first of a series of blog posts on early checkmates and opening traps I plan to make.

It will start out as a collection with maybe not much explanations, which I might add in the future. Also, for the first examples there won't be so much to say... grin.png!

Fool's mate

This is the fastest possible checkmate, which somewhat untypically will be a win for black. It requires white to make the worst possible opening moves f3 (called Barne's opening when played first) or f4 (called Bird's opening when played first, and if black goes 1...e5 this is From's Gambit), and g4, called Grob's attack when played first, as in this example which is popular on YouTube, TikTok, etc.:

(see chess.com/game/5041992917 (the above: Grob's opening) and also chess.com/game/5042003428, incorrectly labeled Barne's opening).
It is absent in the chess.com's master's database, but from lichess/Bird_Opening_Froms_Gambit we see that it happens even to GM's (and some of these miss the mate -- as do 72% of all players! The correct move 2...Qh4# is played in only 28% (!) of the games in this position!)
Let us just remark that all the variants of the first two half-moves, especially From's gambit 1.f4 e5, are playable openings - but of course, Black must avoid the blunder on the second move! 
Another famous historical instance of a variant of Fool's mate for white (where it requires one more half-move) was this:

see also chess.com/article/worst-chess-game-ever. From there I also learned that a variant of this was played by 1900 vs 1400 rated players on a chess olympiad:

A similar (also based on Qh4), slightly more subtle and realistic example is the

Scholar's mate

and its variants, which I discuss in the next post (or else I'll never manage to submit this...)

As an appetizer, let me just mention this "early dead end" in a Wayward Queen attack, i.e., 1.e4, 2.Qh4: