Checkmate
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Checkmate in two moves. 1. f3 e6 2. g4 Qh4 # ( fool's mate )
A checkmate (often just mate ) is a position in the game of chess in which a king is in check and there is no legal move to override this chess command. With a checkmate the game is over and lost for the player whose king was checkmated.
A stalemate must be distinguished from this , in which the player to move also has no legal opportunities to move, but his king is not in check. In the event of a stalemate, the game ends in a draw .
term
The term originally comes from the Persian language :شاه مات shāh māt means "the king ( Shah ) is attacked / defeated / helpless". The translation “the king is dead”, however, is imprecise. The Iranian sociologist Valentine Moghadam traced the origin of the word. It comes from the Persian word māndan , which means “to remain” in the sense of “to be abandoned”. So the king is weary when he is helplessly left to his fate. It also fits that the king is not defeated (killed) on the last move, but remains unable to act.
Derived from the game of chess, the term checkmate is also used in a figurative sense when an opponent has been brought into a hopeless situation.
Mate position
There are three ways to save a threatened king from check:
- Moving the king to a non-attacked space
- Move a piece or a pawn between the attacker and the king (not possible in the event of an attack by a knight, from an adjacent square or in a double check )
- Capturing the attacking piece ( also not possible in a double chess )
The king is therefore checkmated if none of these options exist after a check bid.
If the checkmate is given by a knight and the threatened king cannot avoid it because his own pieces block every way out, one speaks of a suffocated checkmate .
In chess notation , i.e. the recording of the chess moves, a mate situation is marked with "#" or rarely with "++".
Matte image
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With one move on the marked squares, the white queen can checkmate the black king. The moves on the 8th row result in an ideal matt.
Matt is a common tactical motif in combinations . A mated picture or matte motif is understood to be a frequently recurring pattern of figure constellations or move sequences that lead to checkmate. Elementary matte tours can hardly be systematically implemented without knowledge of some matte images. Well-known matt motifs can be found (together with tactical motifs) in the category: matt image .
In the chess problem especially are so-called pattern Matts or model Matt's in demand because this is attributed to a particular aesthetic value. Such mating pictures are economical and pure at the same time , that means: All pieces on the board contribute to the mating (economy), and the black king cannot enter any escape square for only one reason (mating purity). Another improvement is the ideal matt . While the pawns and the white king are tolerated in the pattern matt, in the ideal matt all pieces on the board contribute to the matt image. In the illustration, the moves of the white queen on the 8th row result in an ideal mate, because the escape square g8 is only covered by the queen, the squares g7 and h7 only by the white king. On the other hand Qg7 would not be a model mate, because the escape square h7 in this case would be covered twice by queen and king (impure mate).
Shortest mate game
In the case of fool mating , black mates the white king in two moves (four half moves). Shorter mate games are not possible.
Longest mate sequences
Mandatory processes leading to mate can already be quite long in the game; Mate announcements with over ten moves are not uncommon in chess history. With such mate announcements, moves that seem nonsensical must also be taken into account, for example an uncovered piece in between, which is hit in the next move, but moves the mate back one move.
Composers were interested early on in how long a compulsory mating sequence can actually be. In 1889 the Hungarian Ottó Titusz Bláthy published a checkmate in 257 moves. It is a full-fledged chess problem with a dual-free main variant (with the exception of the mating move), i.e. H. in general, White always has only one optimal continuation on Black's best move. It is assumed that the 50-move rule does not apply. White has to make a long sequence of moves in order to gain a free pace and then repeat this procedure many times. Bláthy later published a similar mate in 292 moves, but with an illegal position, which means that even the most bizarre sequence of moves cannot be reached from the starting position. Such starting positions are usually not allowed in the chess problem.
In 1969 Nenad Petrović published a mate in 270 moves using a matrix developed by Joseph Babson , which has a repeated sequence of moves with the aim of a white speed loss . Of course, this problem requires two white bishops with white squares in the starting position (a white pawn must have converted into a bishop) - such conversion figures are usually viewed as reducing the value.
Other "record attempts" have completely different roots. This is about the longest endgame mat tours regardless of dual freedom and aesthetics - a question that was decisive for the introduction of the 50-move rule a long time ago. It has been known for some time that the endgame of two knights against a pawn is necessarily won in many positions, but can take more than seventy moves before the black pawn move (such as the Study composer Alexei Troizki has shown) or that positions won in the endgame tower + bishop against rook can require significantly more than 50 moves before mate.
By completely recording six-stone endgames in endgame databases, it was possible to show that the peasant endgame tower + knight against two knights is in many cases necessarily won (if the 50-move rule does not apply). On the basis of a database generated by Ken Thompson , which is based on the work of Lewis Stiller , a KTS / KSS position could be established that leads to mate in no less than 262 moves; the matt version is said to have been isolated from the material by Peter Karrer. This is not a chess problem in the same sense as the above exercises by Bláthy and Petrovic, since the solution cannot be found through logical thinking and there is no claim to aesthetics and dual freedom. Tim Krabbé comments:
"Playing over these moves is an eerie experience. They are not human; a grandmaster does not understand them any better than someone who has learned chess yesterday. The knights jump, the kings orbit, the sun goes down, and every move is the truth. It's like being revealed the Meaning of Life, but it's in Estonian. "
“Playing these moves is an eerie experience. You are not human; a grandmaster understands it no better than someone who only learned to play chess yesterday. The jumpers jump, the kings circle, the sun goes down, and every move is the truth. It is as if the meaning of life is being revealed to you - just in Estonian. "
In the meantime, a mate with more than 500 moves was found in the endgame databases in the endgame KDS / KTLS. There, 517 pulls are needed up to the first stroke.
Sometimes the claim is made to be able to show even longer series of moves up to mate by placing further moves in front of a position known from the database. Both the correctness and the sense of such attempts are controversial, as they offer neither knowledge nor aesthetic gain.
Web links
- Bláthys 257-Matt with solution ( Memento from August 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Bláthys 292-Matt with solution
- Petrović '270 matte with solution
- Thompson / Karrer's position with mate in 262 moves with Tim Krabbé's comment
Individual evidence
- ^ "The King Isn't Dead After All! The Real Meaning of Shah Mat or the Lesson of the Commode" ( Memento from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Jan Newton, GoddessChess.com, September 2003
- ^ Henry Davidson: A Short History of Chess , New York 1981, pp. 70f. ISBN 0-679-14550-8 .