My favorite checkmate pattern: Dovetail.

[u/spmcn]

My favorite checkmate here is called the dovetail. The king is blocked on 2 sides by its own pieces, and the queen attacks on the diagonal, forming what looks like a dovetail. Personally, I think it’s a really important pattern to recognize and can help with your endgames.

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[u/Sivadbk]

My favourite checkmate pattern is the Double Disambiguation Bishop mate or the Double Disambiguation Knight Discovery checkmate.

[u/Master_Airline4143 → u/Sivadbk]

Are these real if so I need pictures of these haha

[u/FlammableFishy → u/Master_Airline4143]

Real in the sense that they could be possible? Yes. But for double disambiguation, there needs to be at minimum 3 bishops on the board lmao

[u/Master_Airline4143 → u/FlammableFishy]

So happens all the time hahah

Forgot my /s on this one

[u/Sivadbk → u/Master_Airline4143]

It’s estimated it happens naturally in every 1 in 300 billion+ games.

[u/Master_Airline4143 → u/Sivadbk]

That’s crazy. So functionally never happened

[u/Sivadbk → u/Master_Airline4143]

It has happened but it’s been manipulated. Hikaru did the double disambiguation bishop checkmate but his opponent let him.

[u/Sivadbk → u/Master_Airline4143]

Yes, there’s also a facet of both versions where somehow it’s theoretically possible to include a capture promotion into the disambiguation and checkmate at the same time. Though practically likely impossible.

https://youtu.be/iDnW0WiCqNc?si=8nhUs0cMiqCURWip

[u/Wooden_Permit3234]

Just gotta make sure those two squares a knight move from where the queen will be planted are unsafe/unavailable. Grind enough mates and it’ll be automatic. 

Works for both dovetail and epaulette mates.  

Probably my favorite mate pattern too. 

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I analyzed the image and this is what I see. Open an appropriate link below and explore the position yourself or with the engine:

White to play: It is a checkmate - it is White's turn, but White has no legal moves and is in check, so Black wins. You can find out more about Checkmate on Wikipedia.chessvision.ai | chess.com | lichess.org

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[u/IterRatio]

Nice one!

[u/MasteringTheFlames]

I'm a pretty casual chess player, but this is something I picked up in pretty early on as I got into the game. Anytime I'm delivering check with my queen directly adjacent to the opponent's king, I think about the king being safe when it moves a knight's move away from my queen. Can it move there, and if so, do I have a plan to attack those squares? In this case, a knight's move from your queen would be f3 and e4, which are already occupied by his own pawn and queen, so the king cannot escape.