Two knights forced checkmate might be the rarest checkmate. Two knights alone is not enough to checkmate, as the opposing king must be put in stalemate for at least one move. Therefore it is possible to give a forced checkmate with two knights as long as your opponent has a pawn that is free to move (and optimally cannot promote the next move), as Hikaru demonstrates in one of his clips "The Hardest Checkmate". This is all not to mention the extreme difficulty of pulling this off and the creativity needed, as not many people have studied two knights checkmate.
What's the rarest kind of checkmate?
Sort:
Apr 12, 2022
0
#23
Mango314 wrote:
Hikaru demonstrates in one of his clips "The Hardest Checkmate"
@LitterPicker Thank you
Mango314 wrote:
Two knights forced checkmate might be the rarest checkmate. Two knights alone is not enough to checkmate, as the opposing king must be put in stalemate for at least one move. Therefore it is possible to give a forced checkmate with two knights as long as your opponent has a pawn that is free to move (and optimally cannot promote the next move), as Hikaru demonstrates in one of his clips "The Hardest Checkmate". This is all not to mention the extreme difficulty of pulling this off and the creativity needed, as not many people have studied two knights checkmate.
I didn't want to repeat what someone else already said. But I was also thinking double knight checkmate. But I suppose KN vs. KB checkmate might also be pretty rare.
thank you
Mango314 wrote:
Two knights forced checkmate might be the rarest checkmate. Two knights alone is not enough to checkmate, as the opposing king must be put in stalemate for at least one move. Therefore it is possible to give a forced checkmate with two knights as long as your opponent has a pawn that is free to move (and optimally cannot promote the next move), as Hikaru demonstrates in one of his clips "The Hardest Checkmate". This is all not to mention the extreme difficulty of pulling this off and the creativity needed, as not many people have studied two knights checkmate.
At first I agreed. The two knight checkmate is pretty rare. But the question is what is the rarest. I can think of at least two that are more rare than the two knight checkmate.
LitterPicker wrote:
snoozyman wrote:
Promotion to knight checkmate
I've had a promotion to knight checkmate once, ever. It was a game with the guy who taught me to play. He had a massive material advantage, was busy mopping up my few remaining pieces, and didn't much care that I was marching a pawn towards his back rank, because his king was so securely walled up by his own pieces that there was really very little damage a queen could do.
"Checkmate."
"Don't be ridiculous, how could that possibly be checkmate?"
"That is not a queen, that is a knight, and that is checkmate."
I have savoured the look on his face for thirty years.
[Removed - DB]
I would think either a checkmate with knights, or a checkmate without losing any pieces because the opponent would have to be pretty stupid to not be able to capture anything. But then again, there's things like scholars and fools mate, so probably two knights checkmate.
LitterPicker wrote:
Since the two events were several years apart, I think that's a safe assumption. We'd parted ways after he stole from me and blackmailed my mother, among other things. I then told everybody we knew that he was a very dangerous scumbag, and nobody believed me...
He was a good chess player, though, even before the life sentence, which probably made him better still.
what the heck
1_Kxe8_1-0 wrote:
Is it castling, en passant, king discovered check, or something else?
Idk mabye en passant checkmate?
en passant checkmate.
nah nah nah a8 = N discovered checkmate
Aug 27, 2023
0
#35
En passant Checkmate has got to be right up there with the rarest. Let's go en passant discovered Bishop Checkmate to make it even rarer.
Castling prob
CraigIreland wrote:
En passant Checkmate has got to be right up there with the rarest. Let's go en passant discovered Bishop Checkmate to make it even rarer.
Those happen all the time. What you don't see too often is the KB vs KB checkmate where the checkmating bishop was a promotion.
a 
+
checkmate is hard to pull off, but the rarest checkmate is 
underpromotion checkmate (not 
)
mongemaconha wrote:
Castle checkmate, ofc the rarest
It's actually not that rare. Some famous players have done it Morphy has done it, Lasker had the chance, and even Eric Rosen did it recently. And that's not counting how often it happens in causal play between amateurs. It's even been done in tournaments. Some of the other checkmates listed here do not have that kind of frequency.
Fool's mate