Chess Puzzles: One move mate!

Chess puzzles are a great way to improve our game & challenge our mind. Among them "One move mate" as the name goes, it is to checkmate the opponent in just one single move! You will be given a setup chess position & ask to find a best move that results in checkmate. It may seem easy, but not so much when you start solving. These puzzles can be tricky but the key is to practice more and more one move mate puzzles so that you will gain the understanding of solving a variety of them. 

How do we solve them? 

Let us consider this above position, its white to play and win in one move. In this chessboard, a position is setup. The goal here is to checkmate the black king, so our focus lies there.

How can we search for a move that checkmates in one move? 

1. Scan the board: Firstly it's important to know the piece placement in the board, this is not your game, so you are not familiar with where the pieces are placed, which pieces have support, which of them have potential attacking power, what are the weak spots, etc. A quick scan of the board to your eye can build a picture in your mind that can then help you to solve the puzzle. 

2. Look for weak spots: Since we are here focusing on checkmate, we must look for weak spots of king and nearby pieces. Just a quick scan here to note where the king can escape to, which all squares are already blocked by our pieces, etc. This helps you to gauge potential placement of pieces that can result in checkmate. By now, you may have already found the move to checkmate the king, but if the position is tricky, we can goto next tip. 

3. Look for a potential tactic to be used: We must be on a lookout for a potential tactic that we can utilize to checkmate the opponent king such as checking for pins, discovered attacks, double attacks, fork, deflection concept which can result in checkmate.

4. Look for only checks: Yes, lastly we know that only check can result in checkmate, non-check moves won't solve the puzzle. Hence, look for potential checks using all your pieces. This should happen in your mind, remember that touching the piece can apply touch and move rule. Therefore, in mind's eye, try moving each piece of yours in different directions and give a check, as per point 2, we already know the squares king can escape to, and as per point 1, we know the piece placement of opponent's pieces, combining these, we can find the final answer easily. 

Now, using these above tips, let's solve the puzzle. 

Let's say, we have done a quick scan of the board and are familiar with the piece placements. According to point 2, we must figure out the escaping & weak squares of the king. 

Here, we can see that many of white pieces are covering pretty much all squares of black king (marked in red) and the only two squares it can potentially escape are "d6" & "e4" squares (marked in yellow). Now our aim should be to block those two squares in just one move, keeping in mind that the rest of the blocked squares should stay blocked. 

Now, according to point 3, we must look for any potential tactic to be used in this position. After careful consideration, can we use the discovered check? We know that discovered check is a check when we move one of our piece out of the path to give check, and the moved piece attacks another piece/square. So, can we use that tactic here? Yes, we can. Rook can be moved away from f3 square to give a check from our Bishop. Let's see that in action. 

Let's say that we play 1.Rxf7+ in hungry of gaining an extra piece. Does this achieve our goal of checkmate in one move? No, since the black king still has one square, it can safely move to i.e. "d6" square (marked in yellow). Therefore, it is not just finding the correct tactic; it is about correct placement of piece as well. So what can we do to stop the black king from moving to d6 square? we can play 1.Rf6#

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Rf6# is the answer here, like we can see, the black king has no square to escape to, check is from Bishop and none of the black pieces can capture it nor come in between King and Bishop & also it is irrelevant that rook in f6 is in attack. Therefore, this is how we solve the puzzle.

Why do we need to do this exercise? 

You may wonder why do we need to solve one move mate puzzles? It is natural to question it. One move mate is a stimulation exercise that can help you in various ways. Let us see a few points on how it can help us improve our game:

1. Pattern recognition skill: We have so many tactics and strategies in chess. It is in theory, so how do we practise and recognise it with ease during our game play? One way to sharpen our recognition skill is to use puzzles. Puzzles are a great way to become more familiar with certain tactical patterns such as forks, pins, skewers, double attacks, discovered attacks, deflection, etc. So the more puzzles we solve, the more we can easily identify these patterns in real-time.

2. Trains your brain: It trains your brain to find one move mates. In a given position, you may end up mating the opponent in more than one move. If your brain doesn't spot one move mate, this can end up taking a longer time to mate your opponent. Time is very precious in chess, we have chess clock that monitors time for each player during the game, if you have less time, the pressure on you is more, this can result into you making a mistake or missing an opportunity as you don't have much time to think. But since you have trained your brain to spot one move mate in various positions, this can help you spot weakness and patterns quickly, ensuring you don't miss your opportunity to finish the game quickly & save yourself from any blunders.

3. Calculation & visualization skill: Calculation and visualization can sum up a good play in chess. As it is these skills, we need to keep on improving for better play. In chess, visualization of the board and piece placement is very crucial. We can fall into trap or into any tactics if we miss to see the piece placement and idea behind it. Solving many puzzles can help us with understanding how each piece placement matters & how they can finish the game. Calculating ahead is important in chess, forming patterns in mind beforhand, guessing opponent's move and calculating your own move will save you a lot of time. Hence, solving puzzles can improve these skills more. 

4. Fun: It is so fun to solve these puzzles. They also give us a sense of accomplishment and encourage us further to continue improving our skills. It's a great way to involve more in chess. 

I hope this article has motivated you to keep solving more puzzles to improve your game play & also to have fun with it.

Happy Learning!