Chess lessons › Checkmate patterns
Queen mates to know
The epaulette mate, the dovetail mate, and how a queen finishes a game.
The idea
A queen mates a king whose own pieces block the squares beside it.
- The king’s own rooks stand on both sides of it.
- The queen checks from the front, down the file.
- She covers the squares in front of the king, so it is mate.
In a game: Look for a king with its own pieces on both sides and nothing guarding the squares in front.
How the lesson begins
In the epaulette mate the king’s own pieces stand on both sides of it, like the epaulettes on a uniform. Here they are the rooks on d8 and f8. A queen checks from the front and covers the three squares ahead of the king.
- 1. Qe6# The queen checks along the e-file. She covers d7, e7 and f7, and the king’s own rooks fill d8 and f8.
Find the move
Black to move. White’s king has its own rooks on both sides. Find the epaulette mate.
A hint
Find a check along the e-file that the king cannot take.
Show the answer
1... Qe3#
Qe3 is mate. The queen checks along the e-file and covers d2, e2 and f2, while the king’s own rooks fill d1 and f1.
In numbers
In the puzzle bank
707 puzzles in GreyChess’s bank practise it. Half of them are rated between 929 and 2,021.
The piece that makes the first move of the answer: rook 48%, queen 31%, knight 8%, pawn 7%, bishop 6%, in puzzles from the Lichess puzzle database.