Rook and Bishop Checkmate

Lesson of the Week

Most of my students this week are receiving instruction in checkmate patterns employing rook and bishop. Most of the exercises feature a queen sacrifice to expose the king. I have drawn several positions from Victor Henkin, 1000 Checkmate Combinations, trans. Jimmy Adams and Sarah Hurst (2022) and several more from Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate, trans. Jimmy Adams (2015). I also culled some positions from databases. For discussion of these books, see "Learning Checkmate (Or Teaching It)" and "Two Old Books (and one new)".

This position is published in my own Checkmates and Tactics (2019).

White to move. Mate in three.

This mate in five has stymied many of the students.

White to move

This mate in three is easier.

White to move

Morphy's famous queen sacrifice against Louis Paulsen in 1857 leads a series of imitators offered in Renaud and Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate.

Black to move

Samuel Boden followed Morphy's example to get a winning attack with multiple checkmate threats from this position.

Black to move

In all, I prepared 18 positions, but no students have seen them all. Some of my younger beginners received a worksheet with three mate in one and three mate in two.

This position was on a worksheet for older or more advanced students in my after school chess club. It comes from a game I played against Crafty on the Chessimo iPad app.

White to move

How many can you solve?