My First Book of Checkmate

By Bruce Pandolfini and David MacEnulty

Checkmate wins the game. Learning checkmate patterns helps you win games. It's that simple. Many checkmates fall into recognizable patterns. My First Book of Checkmate presents all the basic patterns in clear diagrams, provides simple puzzles to get you started, and then takes you on a fascinating and rewarding journey through the beautiful and brilliant world of checkmate. By the time you finish this book you will be well prepared both to see danger before it strikes, and to deliver the crushing blows that win games. My First Book of Checkmate is a revised, enlarged edition of The Chess Kid's Book of Checkmate by David MacEnulty, originally published in 2004 by David McKay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russell Enterprises, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781936490950

Bruce Pandolfini

Bruce Pandolfini is one of the world’s most sought-after chess teachers and one of the most widely read chess writers working today. His role as analyst for PBS’s coverage of the 1972 match between chess superstars Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky first launched him into the public eye. His coaching of chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin was portrayed in the book and film Searching for Bobby Fischer. He is a regular columnist for Chess Life, the bible of the chess world, and continues to coach young players professionally and consults for CEOs from numerous Fortune 500 companies. Pandolfini also created over 300 hypothetical games as a consultant for Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. He lives in New York City.

Book preview

MY FIRST BOOK OF

Checkmate

David MacEnulty

2014

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

Milford, CT USA

My First Book of Checkmate

by David MacEnulty

© Copyright 2014

David MacEnulty

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-936490-94-3

Published by:

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

PO Box 3131

Milford, CT 06460 USA

http://www.russell-enterprises.com

[e-mail]

My First Book of Checkmate is a revised, enlarged edition of The Chess Kid’s Book of Checkmate by David MacEnulty, originally published in 2004 by David McKay.

Layout and cover design by Fierce Ponies Enterprises, Brooklyn, NY

For teaching me the importance of breaking complex ideas down into simple, easy-to-understand units, this book is dedicated to my mentor at C.E.S. 70, Eric Whitney.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to chess masters Mitchel Fitzko and Taghian M. Taghian for their thoughtful reading of the manuscript and their valuable suggestions for improvement. I am also very grateful to Bruce Pandolfini for his assistance with this book, for generously agreeing to write the foreword, and for introducing me to the joys of teaching.

Contents

Foreword by Bruce Pandolfini

A Word of Advice by Bruce Pandolfini

Introduction

1 Chess Notation

2 Words and Terms to Know

3 Checkmate Classification

4 Stalemate

PART I

5 Checkmate in the Opening: Scholar’s Mate, Fool’s Mate and the Three Move Mate

6 The Corridor, or Back Rank, Mate

7 Queen Checkmates

8 Queen and Rook Checkmates

9 Queen and King Checkmates

10 Queen Checkmates: The Swallow’s Tail Mate

11 Queen and Bishop Checkmates

12 Queen and Knight Checkmates

13 Rook and King Checkmates

14 Rook and Bishop Checkmates

15 Rook and Knight Checkmates

16 Bishop and Knight Checkmates

17 Bishop Checkmates

18 Knight Checkmates

19 Pawn Checkmates

PART II

20 Mixed Mate in One

PART III

21 Famous Mating Patterns

THE BLIND SWINE CHECKMATE

ANASTASIA’S MATE

MORPHY’S MATE

MORPHY’S CONCEALED MATE

PILLSBURY’S MATE

LOLLI’S MATE

LOLLI’S SECOND MATE

BLACKBURNE’S MATE

BLACKBURNE’S SECOND MATE

ANDERSSEN’S MATE

GRECO’S MATE

DAMIANO’S MATE

DAMIANO’S SECOND MATE

DAMIANO’S THIRD MATE

MATE WITH A QUEEN AND KNIGHT

SMOTHERED MATE

BODEN’S MATE OR THE CRISS-CROSS MATE

LEGAL’S MATE

PART IV

22 Mating Attacks

23 Puzzles to Test Your Skills

Foreword

Bruce Pandolfini

Prior to 1972 the Soviet Union was the chess storybook’s Emerald City, and its minions dominated the art and science of teaching the universal game. But Brooklynite Bobby Fischer changed all that after he defeated the Russian world champion, Boris Spassky, in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the greatest chess match ever played.

Before Fischer snatched the title, chess lessons in the United States consisted largely of a play session between teacher and student, peppered, perhaps with a commentary and analysis. Organized courses, curricula, and educational chess literature were rarities.

Fischer’s triumph attracted millions of neophytes to the game, and they expected more thoroughgoing approaches to chess instruction. A number of strong players tried to fill the demand, but though many were adept at competition, few were conversant in the craft of teaching fundamentals. Some did succeed, however. Their groundbreaking work enabled the next group of chess coaches and trainers to develop a cogent pedagogy with intellectual clout. But it wasn’t until the mid-1980s, with the rise of computers and support-based large-scale academic formats, that educators were able to devise more reliable chess regimens.

David MacEnulty was among the leaders in these seminal efforts. From the early 1990s, David began to formulate the principles of chess instruction for actual use in school settings. He did that by merging the most promising advances of the 1970s with new insights of his own, garnered and nurtured mainly from classroom experience.

David’s big success was the CES 70 chess team. He encouraged his students, underprivileged kids from the South Bronx of New York, to analyze through intelligently posed sets of logical examples. Solving problem after problem, the children soon developed the self-confidence to tackle increasingly complicated chess tasks. David’s uncanny ability to tap inner talent motivated his students to achieve at levels few would have predicted. Not surprisingly, a high percentage of his pupils have relied on the analytical skills they assimilated under his tutelage to succeed in their college years and subsequent careers.

Soon thereafter David took his winning formula to Chess-in-the-Schools. His perspicacious evaluations and commitment to excellence helped shape that organization into the preeminent scholastic chess body in the country. Recently, David has brought his state-of-the-art methodology to The Dalton School, one of the nation’s outstanding private schools. Now David’s stellar track record and his illuminating instructional videos, software and mentoring books have paved the way for his latest offering, My First Book of Checkmate.

As the title indicates, the book is about checkmate. It spotlights conventional checkmates, how to execute them and how to create them. The key is the mating pattern, or the various ways pieces can give checkmate individually or in combination with other pieces. David contends that skill in chess is largely a matter of acquiring an arsenal of such winning patterns. He accordingly urges his students and readers to reinforce their understanding of these schematic templates by constant exercise and training, just as athletes and musicians practice certain moves or passages over and over.

David lays out his course in twenty-three chapters. In each he defines a motif, offers examples, and wherever desirable, provides clarifying explanation. Similar books often include unrelated or unnatural examples that almost never occur in bona fide chess games, but David’s demonstrations all make sense and have immediate practicality.

The twenty-three chapters of My First Book of Checkmate are divided into five main sections. The first section deals with notation, terminology, checkmate definitions, and a distinguishing exposition of stalemate. David quite rightly presumes nothing. By familiarizing the reader in prefatory passages with terms such as escape square, focal point, battery, and double check, David avoids verbal obstacles that could otherwise stymie the reader’s enjoyment and instructional journey.

The first significant group of checkmating weapons appears in PART I. Here, David presents straightforward but compact dioramas that all of us must know, including some that can occur in the opening moves of a game. PART II offers mixed mate in one move puzzles, where the problems can still be solved without a board, just by looking at the elucidating diagrams. PART II gives harder, but well-known paradigms that take longer to crack, yet remain solvable just by careful looking. And PART IV delivers a cavalcade of memorable mating tactics played by the games principal exponents.

Authentic checkmate stratagems are first offered in Chapter 3, and the vital ones are all there, from support mate to smothered mate. As a rule, the concepts that follow are arranged primarily in blocks of four, going in graduated sequence from easiest to hardest, the way veteran chess teachers usually do it. Moreover, the student doesn’t have to strain to find the answers: they’re in smaller type right at the bottom of the same page. So there’s no need to search for the correct replies on the next page, or hunt through the back of the book for chapter and number, or, worse yet, check the answers by turning the book upside down.

Furthermore, David MacEnulty never lets words get in the way of what’s to be learned. Indeed, My First Book of Checkmate is full of insights, anecdotes, history and beautiful examples, all couched in the sort of language used by real students with real problems and real questions. David never employs abstract phraseology, nor does his book contain, as many didactic works do, terms that chess teachers themselves don’t even use.

David’s presentation is redolent with the wisdom that only the most experienced educators could possess. My First Book of Checkmate is a terrific teacher’s manual because David is a terrific teacher. So whether you’re trying to learn how to play or teach others, whether you’re getting this book for yourself or someone else, you won’t be disappointed. However often you turn to My First Book of Checkmate, you’ll find yourself once again escorted through the wondrous world of chess by a guide who knows the way.

A Word of Advice

by Bruce Pandolfini

The best way to improve at chess is to play strong players as often as you can. The second best thing you can do is solve chess problems, and the best way to solve chess problems is in your mind, without moving the pieces on a real board. This takes a lot of practice, as well as