Chess Checkmating Mistakes by Beginners
Beginners' Checkmating Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes in chess, especially when they are still new to the game. Beginners can err right at the opening of a chess match by the way they advance their pawns. The two very common mistakes are the Fool's Mate and the Scholar's Mate.
Fool's Mate
The Fool's Mate occurs when the player breaks up his or her ranks to expose the king to a checkmate. An example is if you are white and you open the game by moving f and g pawns (king's side). Doing so opens up your king to a checkmate if the black pawn on e7 has moved to e5. The black queen then moves from her home square in d8 to h4 to checkmate your king who is in e1. She need move only once to trap your king!
The figure below shows this brief game. The multiple x's show the black queen's path to the white king. The lowercase letters are white pieces; uppercase are black pieces. All other pieces are omitted since they haven't moved yet.
A B C D E F G H 8 Q K 7 X 6 X 5 P X 4 p X - Checkmate! 3 p X 2 p X 1 k
Scholar's Mate
In the Scholar's Mate, the queen and bishop combine to checkmate the enemy king, who is exposed by a weak pawn.
It is not a good idea to move pawns on the king's side since this is where the king is and where he will castle. Moving the pawns opens the king to attack. The queen can move to checkmate the king while she is being backed up by a bishop against capture.
This is illustrated in full chess notation as:
White Black 1.e2-e4 e7-e5 2.Bf1-c4 Bf1-c5 3.Qd1-h5 Ng1-f6 4.Qxf7#
Backrank Mate
Another danger to watch out for is the Backrank Mate. For as long as the king's castle is intact, the king is usually safe. But once the castile is broken by eliminating the rook, the castle can actually become a trap for the king. Once the rook is captured and there is an enemy rook or queen in the same rank as the king, checkmate is made.
In the example below, the black rook is under attack by the white queen. If the rook moves away, the queen will checkmate the king. The queen will capture the rook here resulting in another checkmate. The king cannot capture her since there is a white bishop behind her.
A B C D E F G H 8 R K 7 X P P P 6 X 5 Q 4 B 3 2 1
Therefore beware of threats that break up your castle near the end of the game, and beware of wrong opening moves at the start of a game.