Dear chess fans,
what are your most bizarre checkmates you had (or you were victim of)?
Since I had recently a nice one, I started to dig out old positions which are crazy, just for entertainment, but they can be instructive, too. All positions are from games from myself. Click the link below of the images to see how it came to the position.
Let´s see what we have:
Opera mate
Carried out with a rook and a bishop. Named after the world-famous game played by Paul Morphy while he supposedly was at the opera. If you don´t know that game, you have to check it out.
https://lichess.org/EU9OuAHm#79
Smothered Mate
If the King has no "breathing room" at all, he can be checkmated by a knight easily. Comes classically after a Queen sacrifice, like here. It can be very helpful to know this pattern!
https://lichess.org/Ko3sueDB#43
Epaulet Mate
Happens if two enemy pieces are blocking the two sides of the king (like that decoration stuff on the shoulders of high ranked army personell), if sitting on the edge of the board. Typically the Queen creates this mate (from the 6th rank), but in this case it was a rook.
https://lichess.org/ktNTdXz8wItK
Mate with 2 bishops
This is is quite rare. I don´t think that it has a special name. A similar one, but with the 2 bishops not in parallel but criss-crossing diagonals, is called Boden's Mate after the UK chess master Samuel Boden (1826-1882).
https://lichess.org/Zkgz9U62#53
Blocked a check with a checkmate
Why not kill 2 birds with one stone? Here I blocked the check with moving my bishop from h4 to f2, what incidentally resulted in checkmate!
https://lichess.org/qUowWhCx/black#62
Proves that a check is not always a good idea. To move the King out of such a potentially devastating check has priority!
Strong center
Well, isn´t this a strong center? Unfortunately it doesn´t happen too ofter to have such a pawn cube in the middle of the board!
https://lichess.org/wibuPE44#15
Pawn chain
To have 6 pawns connected and supporting each other, is the longest pawn chain possible. In this case as bonus the leading pawn forked queen and rook. What else could you dream for?
https://lichess.org/pwnWEplQ#81
Magic rescues
I think everybody knows this, when all of a sudden, in a completely lost position, you are miraculously saved due to stalemate, often even actively forced by the unsuspecting opponent, like here, against @schamangerbert 😃.
https://lichess.org/Fr7VpvsV/black#129
Now you might ask "how the hell did Stayout find all these positions"?
Not that difficult, thanks to the ROSEN SCORE!
This nice tool, created by the IM Eric Rosen, will search all your Lichess games and show you some funny mates and positions you had achieved over the time.
https://rosen-score.vercel.app/ you definitely should give it a try!
Show me your most bizarre postions in the comments, the winner gets a 100% upvote!
What is your Rosen score (mine is 266/21429 games = 0,012 with 27% "goals" achieved)?