Can a king mate a king?

thanks! 

I challenge you to a game! @xwoodfin has helped me improve and I recently studied how the pieces move and tactics such as forks and skewers. 

Banana is clearly a troll, but in fairness, he's a pretty good and entertaining one, so I don't see a problem. 

 Not a troll, just want to play people. But if you find me entertaining......

wanna play?

 
From reading your questions, and getting an idea of your understanding of the game, I doubt I'd have a chance. I also doubt many people here would have a chance. I am thankful for your modesty though. You could probably run through almost all the players here easily and be mean about it, but you're nice, so that's cool. 

ikr. () By the way, when you say I am a troll, are you referring to the Norse mythological creature or an internet troll. Please clarify.

 Both. But mostly the latter. 

 lol. You are wrong about the latter, but in terms of the former, you may be correct...

Since you also asked about the difference between check and checkmate, I think I'll start with the basics.

In chess, the object of the game is to capture the opponent's king - sort of. There's one special exception to that.

In order to allow for that exception, which is known as "stalemate", a kind of draw, a game of chess ends one move before the King would actually be captured. So there are special terms added to describe the situatiion of a King on the move before it could be captured in order to allow the rules of chess to be described.

The King is in "check" when, if the player that King belongs to, on his turn, doesn't do anything about it, one or more of the opponent's pieces could capture it. It is not allowed for a player to move his King to a square where it could be captured on the opponent's coming move: "the King cannot move into check".

If a player has no legal moves - even if the King could move, but to a square where it could be captured - the game is over. But it is only a win for the other player if his King is in check. That's "checkmate". If his King is not in check, but any move would put it in check, that's "stalemate", which is only a draw.

A King can't be moved into check, so it can't be moved where it gives check to the opponent's King, because if it could move to the opponent's King's square, that King could be moved to the square where it is located.

However, that doesn't mean that a King can't participate in a checkmate. Because the squares around it are squares the enemy King can't move to, it can cut off the enemy King's escape from a check. It could also be moved out of the way of another piece that now checks the other King - a "discovered check". So a King move can give mate, but a King can never check the other King.

So I survived longer than I should have then!

But I don't have more than two kings, so how will I do that? (my board came with only the required amount of pieces and an extra queen to place when my opponent isn't looking)

Just needed clarification, didn't quite understand what he was trying to say (he could have been calling me a mythological creature - potentially a compliment - or an internet troll)

this is hilarious

my friends and I do it all the time