Anastasia’s Mate is another beautiful and memorable checkmating pattern. This was named after the last Russian Tsar’s daughter, Anastasia. The entire family of the tsars were executed on March 15th, 1918. But rumors persisted that the youngest daughter had escaped. There have been books and movies about her, including an animated children’s film.
One famous novel, Anastasia, used the following checkmate and it has been known as Anastasia’s Mate ever since.
This lesson borrows heavily from Artur Yusupov’s book, Build up Your Chess 1: The Fundamentals (2014) pages 8-28.
Today, we will learn some of the classic Che mating patterns that have become so famous they all have cool names!
We start with one of the very oldest mating patterns in chess. In fact, it is so old it predates the game as we know it! Back before modern chess was played, the Persians played a similar game where the Knights, Rooks and Kings still moved the same way they do today.
Muslims in modern Arabia used to ride around composing poetry and chess problems! This next problem is known as the Arabian Mate, and fittingly uses Knights, Rukhs (the Persian name for the castle-y pieces) and the Kings.
Here is the same idea, but disguised a bit.