I've been playing with a new app on my phone to improve my endgame training (It's called chess endgame training and I'd recommend it, just loads of endgame positions) and found I was actually struggling to mate in the Queen vs Knight endings. the one bad thing about the app is it doesn't show you technique, just moves, so in these endings it will fling the queen about creating a complex mating net that doesn't really jump out at the beginner. So I did some work and found even the youtube videos weren't ideal, so, after continuing to slave over this, I've come up with something, while horribly inefficient, much easier to learn.

It can be split into a method and a couple of key moves. Essentially your just using the queen like in a Rook vs King endgame.

I've just called walking across the king. Basically you get your queen as far away as possibly and use it like rook, this should limit the possibility of knight forks as the queen will be too far away from the action (obviously beware, they are your opponents main weapon). to get this to work and stop the pesky checks I found if you move your king across the three squares directly in front of the king, on the third there are no checks. You continue doing this, and when there's not a check, move your queen like in a rook endgame, take away a rank and start again.

Then you have the two crucial moves where you move your queen right in front of the your opponents king and keep him on the back rank from behind the knight.

Then finally 2 moves to remember to deliver the mate, when the knight is out of checks with the king on the back rank he must move away. Remember to chase him and if he's too far away to capture after that, you just go to the next square on your walk and deliver mate.

Too hard to understand? needless complicated? or helpful to anyone?

** I said I'd mention I'd say more about an annotation, if the king tries to sneak out it's possible to just flip the technique 90 degrees, and start chasing him towards the bottom of the board, instead of the left hand side like I've done in the example.

As ever it should be said always be on the watch for a knight fork and its good practice if you're not sure to keep your king and queen on opposite colours as the knight can't fork when they're like this. I played this 5 times vs stock fish 10 and won every time (as you should, it's a forced win), a couple of times the computer deviated and played moves that made it easy to just capture the knight earlier. So obviously in those instances, just do that.

Very nice. I was struggling with that mating net before. I think videos on youtube are BS.

With such technique i am able not only to checkmate but do it very fast. I have done it in 16 moves which is only 4 moves more from engine suggestion, impressive. Looks like it is quite optimal way to do. What I like here is that this way we can keep our queen and king very far and reduce a chance to be forked significantly.

Man, this is super helpful !

I didn't know how to do that before, but now I do. Now I can be confident that I'll have the technique to do this in bullet/blitz :D

I've always found it is easier to win the knight first.  Pin it, then get the queen onto a square adjacent to the knight (not diagonal to).  The queen hits six of the knight's eight squares from this position, so the knight (and king with it) has to deactivate (move towards the edge):

Once the knight is on the edge, the defending side is easily zugzwanged and the king & queen ending is won trivially.  If the knight tries to centralize after the king is pushed away, it is easily forked by the queen.

Of course, if you're on a time control with no delay, the direct approach shown above is faster, but there are fewer stalemate tricks if you win the knight first, and the 50-move counter starts over as soon as the knight falls.

wow!!  cool techniques!!!! 

dumbest post on chesscom

I lied.

I know this is old, but I was just googling how to play Queen vs Knight because I could NOT for the life of me figure it out. I've been sitting for 20 minutes on chess endgame trainer trying to solve the first one, and even after looking at the hints multiple times, IT MADE NO SENSE. I found this post, and OH MY GOD. THANK YOU. After going through it once, step by step following your instructions, and doing it a few times on my own. I can now speed through a solve in 45 seconds. Thank you!!!!!!!!!

.