Easy Checkmate Trick in English Part-1
Hello Chess Friends, And Welcome to Chess Talk. In today’s chess post, I am going to show you how to Win an endgame when you have a king, a bishop & a knight versus your opponent’s slonely king. You need to watch this till the end because I also have a really interesting chess Puzzle for you all. Let’s see if you can solve that.
So without further ado, let’s get started. When we talk about a bishop and knight endgame, you need to focus on 2 important ideas in chess: the idea of restriction and the idea of piece coordination. You really need to understand these concepts because these will help you, not only in this type of endgame but in every aspect of chess. There have been several instances where a lot of strong chess players didn’t know how to convert this position into a win and the game ended in a draw.
There are also some people who think that such a checkmate is not at all possible. But they are wrong. It’s a little difficult, I admit, but not impossible. In this post, I will show you a simple step-by-step method to achieve this checkmate. So let’s break it down.
There are 3 key steps to achieve this checkmate. First, you need to bring your pieces to the center regardless of where your opponent’s king moves. Number 2 would be to force the opponent’s king to any edge of the board. And three would be to checkmate your opponent in a corner. That’s simple, isn’t it? Well, there are some nuances to this but broadly, these are the 3 basic steps you need to follow.
You also need to keep in mind that you have50 moves within which you need to checkmate your opponent. If you want to know more about the 50 move rule, So let’s start. Our first aim is to bring all our pieces in the center. Let’s begin with our king, moving it closer to the center. Let’s say black stops our king from advancing further. Now the best way to respond to such a move would be to bring your bishop in between both the kings.
Notice how the bishop blocks both these squares and forces the king to retreat. You can remember this pattern. Whenever the kings are facing each other like this and you want to push your opponent’s king back, you can simply bring your bishop in between. Now you can continue to advance your king. Black might want to stay in the center like this. If you evaluate the moves you have got in this position, then you will see that If you move your bishop like this, then the king can run away in this direction. So it’s better to bring all your pieces into play by advancing your knight. Notice how you are blocking off this king from running away.
Let’s say now the king moves over here. We can simply take control of the center by moving our king like this. Now your opponent can go 2 ways. If he goes this side, then we will push him on this edge. And if he goes this side, then we will drive him towards this edge. So he brings his king here and we also move our king like this to stop him from escaping this way. He keeps his king closer to the center and then our bishop simply takes over the center. Our first step is now complete. In just 7 moves, we have taken control of the center with all our pieces working in a coordinated way.
As you saw, this is quite simple. There is no fixed way of doing this. You just need to play some basic moves to achieve this position.Okay, now before moving onto step 2, I would like to remind you that if you want to learn more about chess and become a Better Chess player, then you need to hit that Red Subscribe Button right now. And don’t forget to press the bell so that you get instant updates from our channel.
Now let’s move to step 2. After black moves, our objective is to push the opponent’s king to an edge of the board. How do we that? Just start with a simple question. Ask yourself where will your opponent move to stay close to the center. Well, in this position, black would want to move here to stay close to the center. Right? So we basically need to block this square without giving away other squares close to the center. A simple way to achieve this would-be a bishop to d5. It’s the same pattern I showed you earlier. The king will have to go back. We can advance our king further like this and let’s say black moves sideways.
Now comes the tricky part. How do you drag your opponent back further? In this position, you need to ask yourself the same question. Where can your opponent move to stay close to the center? In this position, black has 2 options. If he moves this way, then you can simply follow the same pattern of bringing your bishop in between and forcing the king back. But what if black plans to run away from this site. You need to prevent that from happening. Your knight is not doing much at the moment so let’s bring it into the game.
Here, I want to make you understand another useful pattern in which your bishop and knight co-ordinate. Let’s play knight to d2 first and the black king is trying to run away as expected. Now here comes the beautiful pattern I was talking about. Knight to c4. Just look at how effectively both these pieces are creating a wall blocking the king from escaping. The white bishop is controlling the light squares and this knight is controlling the dark squares. Whenever you place your knight and bishop diagonally close to each other like this, they will be most effective. So just remember this pattern, it will really help you when you are stuck in games like these.
Now black really has only one choice and that’s coming back to the middle. If you ask yourself now, black has these two squares to stay close to the center so we need to block these off. King to f6 would be a good move because it will cut off this square. Now the king avoiding the edge moves back in this direction. Black is left with this square, let’s take it away. Our bishop and knight are placed perfectly so let’s bring our king one step closer to block off this square. The black king has to retreat and we have got the king on the edge of the board.
Congratulations, that’s step 2 complete. It took us about 13 moves to reach this position. Okay, now before moving onto step 3, you need to remember one important principle. In a bishop and knight endgame such as this, you can only checkmate your opponent’s king in a corner which is of the same color as your bishop. This means that if you have a white bishop, then you can mate your opponent on any of these light-colored squares only and if you have a black bishop, then you can mate your opponent on any of these dark-colored squares only. Seems clear, let’s move ahead. You know now that we have to push the king to the light-squared corner, so it’s quite straightforward.
I will make a separate video to show you what to do if your opponent runs away with his king to a corner which is not the same color as your bishop. So stay tuned for that. For the moment, let’s concentrate on this game. Well, which square should you control now? This one, right? You want to keep this king on the edge of the board. So let’s play king to d6. You might think that what if this king tries to run away from here.
Don’t worry. If he moves his king like this, we just need to block off this square. So what should we do? Yes, it’s a bishop to f7. King goes back and now we need to bring our pieces a little closer. Black might think of escaping from here. So let’s block off this square by moving our knight here. If the king goes towards this corner, he makes things easy for us. So he will try to move towards this side. We need to block this square so we simply check with our knight. King comes back. We defend this knight with our king. Black has only one legal move.
We also move our king defending this square, preventing black from running away. And if the king goes back, can you see what can be done to take away this square? Yes, just simply check the king with your bishop. Black has only one legal move so he moves back. In this way, we have reached an ideal position. This is the position you should always be aiming for in a bishop and knight endgame. You might ask What’s special about this position? For starters, you have the king in the correct corner and we have restricted him to these 2 squares only. Your king is defending these 3 squares and your bishop is controlling this square.
So we formed a cage to trap the black king. Now let’s move our knight since it is free. King moves to the corner. Now the technique will be to check the king with the knight first and then finally checkmate in the corner with the bishop. But here comes the tricky part. Don’t play knight to a6 just yet otherwise it will be a stalemate. We need to play a waiting move with our bishop keeping him on this diagonal. So let’s play bishop d7. And now when the king moves, we give a check with our knight and then finally checkmate with our bishop. It is a mate in 24 moves.
This is a systematic approach to checkmate with a knight and a bishop. The most important points that you need to remember are these bishop moves to push the king back. Another one is the co-ordination between your bishop and knight to create a wall to block your opponent’s king like this. The concept of taking away squares to restrict your opponent and finally, playing waiting moves with your bishop to avoid stalemate. I will release the second part of this video which will cover the steps to drag your opponent out of the wrong corner.
That’s a very important technique you need to master so don’t forget to watch that. Okay, so It’s puzzle time. But Before moving onto today’s chess puzzle, I request you to show your support and Like this video. We are targeting 3000 likes on this video, so come on guys, hit that Thumbs Up button right now. Okay, so here’s the puzzle. In this position, It’s your turn and you need to find the Best Move for White.
If you are able to find the solution to this puzzle, then share it in the comments below. Whoever gives the correct answer with the perfect explanation, I will be pinning that comment at the top so that everyone can see it. All the Best Guys! Let’s see how many of you can solve this.
