ANDRE'S LESSON: UNDERSTANDING THE KING AND QUEEN CHECKMATE (BEGINNER)

Hi everyone! This is my first lesson on the NYChessKids Blog; I hope you enjoy it and learn from it!

I have found that it takes students awhile to really understand the King and Queen vs. King checkmate. I remember the first time I found myself with the extra queen: I was in 7th grade playing against one of my friends at lunch. I thought it was an easy win, but when lunch finished, I still had not been able to checkmate him! So I went and studied and finally figured it out (I never attended a chess class, and never took lessons until I was in college). We are going to go through it, so that you UNDERSTAND how it works.

Take out an empty chessboard (if you have one), or you can just imagine this:

Place the enemy king in the center of the board, say on e5. From here, the king can move to one of eight different squares (d4, d5, d6, e6, f6, f5, f4, or e4).

Now place this king on one of the edges of the board, say on e8. From here. the king can move to one of five different squares (d8, d7, e7, f7, or f8). With the enemy king still on e8, place the king of the attacking side (the side with the queen), on e6. Notice that the enemy king cannot go to d7, e7, or f7, because we would have kissing kings. Not a good thing! The king can only go to d8 or f8.

If we put the queen on a8, b8, c8, g8 or h8 it will be CHECKMATE! The king and queen work together to take away all of the king's escape squares.

Also, if we put the queen on e7, it will be CHECKMATE. The queen "gets in the enemy king's face!"

Remember these checkmating positions.

Now, how do we get to this? The answer is to drive the enemy king back to one of the edge squares. They are: a1-a8, a8-h8, h8-h1, h1-a1.


Here is an example: (White: King on e3, Queen on d3; Black: King on e5)

1.Qb5+ Kd6

Black would like to stay close to the center. If you cannot get the enemy king to one of the edge squares, you cannot give checkmate!

2.Ke4 Ke6 3.Qc6+

Notice that the Black king is being forced farther and farther back, until he has to go to the back edge. The White king is keeping the Black king from escaping because of "kissy-kissy."

3...Kf7 4.Ke5 Kg7 5.Qf6+ Kh7 6.Qg5

The magic move! The king is forced to go back and forth between h8 and h7 while White brings his king closer.

6...Kh8 7.Kf6 Kh7 8.Qg7#

Checkmate! The King and Queen worked together to make it happen.


What did we learn from this lesson?
1.To give checkmate with King and Queen, the enemy king must be forced to one of the edges of the board.
2.Because of the "no kissing kings" rule, the enemy king can be very restricted from moving.
3.Teamwork! The King and Queen must work together or there is no checkmate!