How to Checkmate in Chess: The 5 Basic Mates Every Beginner Needs

To checkmate in chess, you attack the enemy king so that it has no legal way out: it cannot move to a safe square, the attacking piece cannot be captured, and the check cannot be blocked. In practice that means using two pieces together - one to give check and one to cover the king's escape squares - and pushing the king to the edge of the board, where it has fewer squares to run to.

Most beginner games that should be won are drawn or lost at exactly this point: a player is a queen up and cannot finish. These five mates fix that. If you need a reminder of what check, checkmate and stalemate mean, see our chess rules for beginners first.

The one principle behind every checkmate

A king in the centre of the board has eight squares around it. On the edge it has five; in a corner, three. Every basic mate works by driving the king to the edge, then covering the remaining squares. Your own king is part of the attack in most of them - beginners often leave it at home, and that is why the mate never comes.

1. Checkmate with king and queen

King and queen against a lone king is the mate you will need most often, because promoting a pawn to a queen is how most endgames are won. The method has two phases.

1. Box the king in. Use the queen alone to shrink the area the enemy king can move in. A useful habit is to place the queen a knight's move away from the king - it cuts off a rank and a file at once without giving check. Each time the king steps back, follow it with the queen, keeping the box getting smaller.
2. Bring your king. Once the enemy king is stuck on the edge, stop moving the queen and walk your own king up until it protects a square next to the enemy king.
3. Deliver mate. Give check with the queen on a square your king protects, so it cannot be captured.

2. The ladder mate with two rooks

Two rooks can checkmate without any help from the king. They take turns: one rook guards a rank so the king cannot step back over it, while the other gives check on the next rank, pushing the king one rank closer to the edge. Then they swap roles - like climbing a ladder - until the king is on the last rank.

The one thing to watch: if the enemy king walks towards one of your rooks, move that rook to the far side of the board along its rank before continuing. Rooks are strongest at a distance, where the king cannot attack them.

3. Checkmate with king and rook

King and rook against king takes longer, because one rook cannot do the ladder alone. The rook cuts the enemy king off along a rank or file, and your king walks up until the two kings stand facing each other with one square between them (this is called opposition). At that moment a rook check along the edge is mate.

When the enemy king refuses to step into opposition, make a "waiting move" with the rook along the same rank or file - it keeps the king cut off and passes the move back. Our beginner syllabus gives a full session each to the king-and-queen, double-rook and king-and-rook mates, followed by a combined practice class, because they need to become automatic.

4. The back-rank mate

The back-rank mate happens in real games all the time. A king that has castled sits behind its own pawns; if those pawns have not moved, a rook or queen landing on the back rank gives check, and the king's own pawns block every escape.

Defending against it is easy once you know it: at a quiet moment, move one pawn in front of your castled king (h3 or g3 for White) to give it an escape square - players call this "making luft". Back-rank combinations are a whole topic of their own in the Intermediate Chess Course.

5. Scholar's Mate, and how to stop it

Scholar's Mate is a four-move checkmate that beginners fall for constantly: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 Nf6?? 4.Qxf7#. The queen and bishop both aim at f7, the square only the black king defends.

You should know it so that it never happens to you, not so you can play it. Against an opponent who knows how to defend, bringing the queen out early just loses time. The defence is simple: after 3.Qh5, play 3...g6 to block the queen, or 3...Qe7 to defend f7, and then develop your pieces while the white queen is chased around. We explain the thinking in chess opening principles for beginners.

How to practise checkmates

• Set up each mate against a friend or a computer and play it from a random starting position until you can mate within the fifty-move limit every time.
• Solve mate-in-one puzzles daily. Spotting a one-move mate quickly is the foundation for longer combinations - our beginner course spends four sessions on mate in one alone, from easy to mixed.
• Say the escape squares out loud. Before giving check, name every square the king could go to and what covers it. This catches stalemate too.

Once these are second nature, the next step is winning material that leads to mate - forks, pins and skewers. That is our guide to chess tactics for beginners.