Mate in Two - How Difficult Could It Be?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working my way through Artur Yusupov’s Build Up Your Chess, The Fundamentals 1. When I read the Chapter 9 title “Mate in two moves”, I had mixed feelings. Part of me was annoyed that he thought readers needed even more mating practice after the first eight chapters, which had already included two chapters on mating motifs. But the lazy part of me was happy that I had another chapter that I could complete quickly and easily. These feelings were based on my assumption that the mate in two moves problems would look something like this:

WHITE TO MOVE, AND MATE IN TWO

The first diagram of the chapter showed me that my initial assumptions were incorrect. Although I was able to find the solution, it took me quite a while to do so. See how quickly you can solve it (there is only one move that mates in exactly two moves), but make sure you look at all your opponent's possible replies before choosing your move:

Like me, you might think some of the following problems from the chapter are ridiculous. All of them have only one correct solution:

PROBLEM ONE

What player wouldn’t immediately play Rxg5?

PROBLEM TWO

Would you take time here to look for a mate in two?

PROBLEM THREE

Here, you should avoid stalemate, but you don’t need to find mate in two to win easily.

So why should we study “ridiculous” mates in two like these? Yusupov poses the following question: “What is the use of calculating a long and correct variation if your opponent has a much better reply on move one?”. Stating that “you must develop your skill at calculating short variations, while at the same time taking into account the possibilities available to your opponents”, he says that ‘mate in two’ exercises are ideal for training the accurate calculation of short variations.

I’ll admit that I nearly gave up on this chapter, out of sheer frustration, as some of the exercises took me ages to find a solution (which often turned out to be incorrect, as I’d missed one of my opponent’s replies, after seeing the other 20!). To add insult to injury, the exercises were only worth one point each, although they were far more difficult than one-point exercises in other chapters (although points only count for a single chapter, so the effect was purely psychological). In the end, I barely managed to get a “pass” score, and I should probably redo the chapter in future.

This finally brings me to the question I asked in the title of this blog post: Mate in two – how difficult could it be? The answer is: More difficult than you would think!