Who can remember their very first Checkmate ?

My grandfather taught me to play when I was maybe 9 or 10.  He never let me win. 

I didn't start studying the game until years later.  I worked at an all-night coffee shop called 'Notsuoh' in downtown Houston, TX.  The owner was an avid player, and there were chess boards all over the place, and this big box of pieces from like 100 random sets.  The engineers from the NASA base would come in and kick my butt mercilessly... I learned a great deal from those beatings.

I clearly remember the first time I beat one of my best opponents.  Maybe half the pieces left on the board, and he hung a rook.  I dogpiled him with a knight, a bishop, and a rook, and mated in the center of the back rank - he had never castled.

I remember being quite proud of having my pieces well positioned to take advantage of his mistake, and finish the game quickly.  I remember what he said to me: "See, that's what you can do when you stop feeling sorry for yourself 'cause you ain't the best, and just play the game."  He was absolutly right.  ;-)

I remember my first official game against a master . It was against Martin ( Marty ) Appleberry back in the mid 70s and I remember it was in Columbus Ga and I was very nervous but not for long because I was quickly crushed.... some old timers here may remember Appleberry , he is an old timer himself now. 

My first checkmate my king and rook kept my brother's king on one side of the board while I marched 5 pawns across one at a time to become queens. This was after my rook captured all his pawns. I checkmated him by accident once there were too many queens and i moved the first one. He later figured out and showed me how to checkmate with a queen and rook leap frogging ranks.

I remember, when I was younger (Kindergarten-2nd Grade) (I wish I would have taken the game seriously then, I might have actually turned out an OK chess player. Too late now.) I was in a program for gifted children. (Too bad I couldn't really keep that either ) One of the things we would do is play chess. Back then, I could care less about the king. What I really went after... was the Queen... I didn't win much. But I think my first non-loss ever was when I was up a queen or two and a rook... against a lone king... and there was stalemate...

I don't remember my first checkmate, though.

I definitely don't remember my first checkmate, though it would have happened a few years ago.  I learned to play at around the age of 10 by reading a book in school aimed at teaching children chess, though the title long escapes me now.  At first, I didn't read the book closely and just kind of skipped around, but I thought the object was to take all your opponent's pieces (like checkers) and just browsing a diagram of how pawns capture and not reading it, I thought pawns moved forward diagonally.  It wasn't until later that I picked up new bits of information here & there that I learned the rules, and from playing Chessmaster 3000 a few years back (under Windows 3.11!) I learned about en passant.  Now just a couple years ago I learned about openings & basic strategy.

So even though I knew how to play for so long, I really didn't know anyone in person who played so my first checkmate must have been against a computer.

I can remember who i first checkmated, but not how it happened.

I remember playing with my next door neighbor.  Neither of us knew much about chess.  We set up the pieces incorrectly, so that each King was opposite his opponent's queen.  I made a much which resulted in a discovered checkmate much to the surprise of both of us.  It took us a while to realize it was a check and a while longer to realize it was mate.  That was over 50 years ago, where did all that time go?