Chess lessons › Checkmate patterns
Knight and rook mates
Anastasia’s mate and the Arabian mate: the knight guards, the rook strikes.
The idea
The knight takes the king’s squares, and the rook gives the check.
- The knight takes away the marked squares next to the king.
- The king’s own pawn blocks another square.
- The rook checks along the edge, and the king has nowhere to go.
In a game: Look for a king on the edge, your knight close by, and a rook that can reach its file.
How the lesson begins
A knight and a rook make a strong team. In Anastasia’s mate the black king stands on the edge of the board, and its own pawn on g7 blocks one square. The knight on e7 takes away g8 and g6. The rook then checks along the h-file, and the king has nowhere to go.
- 1. Rh4# The rook checks along the h-file and covers h8 and h6. The knight covers g8 and g6, and the pawn blocks g7.
Find the move
Black to move. The knight on e2 guards g1 and g3, and White’s own pawn blocks g2. Find the mate, Anastasia’s mate with the colours reversed.
A hint
Check the king along the h-file.
Show the answer
1... Rh5#
Rh5 is mate. The rook checks along the h-file. The knight covers g1 and g3, and the pawn on g2 blocks the king’s way.
In numbers
In the puzzle bank
536 puzzles in GreyChess’s bank practise it. Half of them are rated between 877 and 1,756.
The piece that makes the first move of the answer: knight 44%, rook 39%, queen 16%, bishop 1%, in puzzles from the Lichess puzzle database.