Mate Monster: Mate on f7 (1)

You know what checkmate is and you have already learned a lot of ways to checkmate the king. But often, mate is bit further away than the next move. If that is the case, you need to have a plan to win.

In this lesson, we have given you real monster powers. The other player makes poor moves. He forgets to defend. Whoops… but hurray for you: like a real mate monster, you can checkmate his king!

Have a look at the example.

This is a very famous mate plan: the Scholar’s Mate. It takes only four moves to mate! White starts the game with moving the pawn in front the king. Next, White's queen and bishop (random order) will point at the f7 square. If Black does not defend correctly, the queen captures the pawn on f7 and the game is over. Every mate monster dreams about a quick win like this!

The Scholar’s Mate is a super cool mate plan. But it is also a bit of a fairy tale. You won’t get far with this plan if the other player pays attention. If he spots your plan, it does not work at all! Now that you have seen it, you won’t fall for it, will you? But in this lesson, the fairy tale always comes true…

Example 2 shows another way to achieve Scholar’s Mate. This time, the queen moves through the center.

What do you have to do?

Your goal is checkmate on f7 (the red square). Come up with a plan. Your bishop and queen are going to help each other. Which moves do you need to play to checkmate the king?