Smothered Mate Chess Puzzles

Background reading

Smothered mate

In chess, a smothered mate (or informally, smother mate ) is a checkmate delivered by a knight in which the mated king is unable to move because it is completely surrounded (or smothered) by its own pieces, which a knight can jump over. The mate is usually seen in a corner of the board, since only three pieces are needed to surround the king there, less than anywhere else. The most common form of smothered mate is seen in the adjacent diagram. The knight on f7 delivers mate to the king on h8, which is prevented from escaping the check by the rook on g8 and the pawns on g7 and h7. Similarly, White can be mated with the white king on h1 and the knight on f2. Analogous mates on a1 and a8 are rarer because kingside castling is more common than queenside castling and brings the king closer to the corner.

Methods

For a smothered mate to occur in a game, it is usually necessary to sacrifice material to compel pieces to smother the king – a player is unlikely to voluntarily surround their king with pieces in a way that makes a smothered mate possible.

Philidor's mate

Philidor's mate, also known as Philidor's legacy, is a checkmating pattern that ends in smothered mate. This method involves checking with the knight forcing the king out of the corner of the board, moving the knight away to deliver a double check from the queen and knight, sacrificing the queen to force the rook next to the king, then mating with the knight. The technique is named after François-André Danican Philidor; this is something of a misnomer, however, as it is earlier described in Luis Ramirez Lucena's 1497 text on chess, Repetición de Amores e Arte de Axedrez, which predates Philidor by several hundred years. An example is to be found in the game Jan Timman–Nigel Short at the 1990 Tilburg tournament. From the diagrammed position, play continued: Note that White would force mate even if his rook, and pawn on e7, were removed from the board, and Black had a knight on f6. In that case, 27.Nf7+ Kg8 28.Nh6+ Kh8 (28...Kf8 29.Qf7#) 29.Qg8+ Nxg8 (or 29...Rxg8) 30.Nf7 still mates.

Opening traps

Occasionally, a smothered mate may be possible in the opening of a game. One of the most famous, and most frequently occurring, is in the Budapest Gambit. It arises after: Note that the knight cannot be taken because the pawn on e2 is pinned to the white king by the black queen on e7. Another notorious example is the so-called "Blackburne Shilling Gambit" (named after the 19th-century English player Joseph Henry Blackburne, supposedly because he used it to win shillings from amateurs). It goes: There is also a well-known trap in the Caro–Kann Defence: This trap has occurred in many games, perhaps the earliest recorded example being Alekhine–Four Amateurs, simultaneous exhibition, Palma de Mallorca 1935.

Examples from games

An example of a similar smothered mate in master-level play is the game Edward Lasker–Israel Horowitz, New York City 1946, which went: Another example is the game Unzicker–Sarapu, Siegen Olympiad 1970: Sarapu now resigned in light of 19...Rxg8 20.Nf7#. Maybe the finest example of smothered mate utilizing the knight is from Barrister John Cochrane–Moheschunder "the Brahmin" Bannerjee in Calcutta, British India 1855:

See also

* Checkmate patterns