A wonderful mating theme from ICC game

My friend and teammate from the Vestmann Islands team was playing a 3-minute game on ICC vs a Grandmaster and finished him off with a mate in 3 in this position.


1.Qf6!! Nxf6
2.Bg7!! Kxg7
3.h8=Q

Aside from being very beautiful and clean, this mating pattern also has a nice aesthetic geometry to it. White makes successive checks on the diagonal squares, f6, g7 and h8 and each time with a different piece! This could possibly be unique but I'll leave that to someone with good searching tools in databases.

ICC helpmate

Faced with the constant threat of gaining time with Nf7-g5 in the timescramble, my opponent found a radical solution in this position:



1....Nh7!!!?????

When I saw nothing better than...

2.Nf7#

Smothered mate

Got this position in an online blitz game. My opponent actually wasn't a complete patzer as his position would indicate...he just clumsily allowed d4-d5-d6 with tempos in the opening (hitting Nc6 and then Be7) and it spiralled pretty quickly out of control for him. Anyway I got to deliver a smothered mate in a slightly different form than it usually appears (The standard Nf7-h6, Qg8+ and Nf7#)

1.Ng6+ Kh7 2.Nxf8++ Kh8 3.Qh7 Nxh7 4.Ng6#

Patterns at work

Do you think knowing the following mating pattern:

Would help you find the win in the following position:



See if you can before I post the answer in the comments!

Endgame mate

Mates in the endgame are often amusing and also instructive. Here white came up with a nice mating net:



1.Rh3+! Bxh3 2.gxh3 Rhc8 3.Rg2+ Kh3 4.Kf2!

It's always very aesthetic when material is sacrificed and then followed up with a quiet move. After these calm king move, black has no defence against the threat of Rg3++ followed by Rh3#



It should be noted that 2...Rb5 is a better defensive try but on the other hand instead of being immediately mated black loses material after 3.Rg8+ picking up the h8 rook.

Funny checkmate in one

Got this position with black on PlayChess.com. My opponent is an IM, rated 2467 on PlayChess and 2382 in FIDE rating. This is obviously a French Defence and this time a Black Queen Blues variation. My opponent played a very rare queenside castle in this line and now after my move 21...Nd8 he found:



22.Qb4??

A quite hilarious mistake and of course the rare positioning of the white king in this line meant that this otherwise standard move is now met with:

22...Qc2#

Mating patterns: Blackburne's Mate

I have a nice video series on chess patterns on Chessvideos.tv called "Pattern Recognition". All in all I have made 5 videos in this ongoing series.

If you have seen video #1 you should have no problems solving this puzzle: (black to move)



Solution appears at the end of this post.

The pattern occurs more often in this form:



This is from Stefansson - Bruzon.  Stefansson finished the job with 22.Qxh5!
Black loses on the spot as he just lost a piece, mate is threatened on h7 and he can't take the queen because 22....gxh5 is met with 23.Bxh7#

In our puzzle position black wins with 1...Qxf3! 2.gxf3 Bxf3+ 3.Kg1 Ng4 and mate with Bh2 next cannot be avoided. Sort of going the backdoor into our mating pattern!

To learn more about this pattern and some others you can watch my video on Cv.tv:

http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2484