Two Knights Checkmate

Last night in the club we had an entertaining attempt at trying to mate with two knights against a king and pawn. This is a really tricky mate. You have to blockade the pawn, drive the king to the corner using just one knight and king, almost stalemate him there and then bring your blockading knight over to mate just before his pawn queens.

It seems impossible. I played it out on Shredder tablebases and some of the moves seemed very unintuitive - e.g. moving the knight away from the king. You would never find them over the board.

However I did see some common mistakes from people trying to win this and here are some plans for the defending side.

  • Keeping the king close to the pawn was sucessful for a while. It took a lot of moves to drive the king away.
  • Once the king is driven away then head for the side of the board furthest away from the pawn so that the knight blockading it is unable to attack the king.
  • A common mistake by the attacker was to move the blockading knight before the king was trapped in the corner. In that case push the pawn. It is very hard for the knight to get back in front of it and he will probably have to just capture it and draw the game. If you are ever not in check and can push the pawn then push it.

Based on the our attempts I feel confident in saying that if I was defending this position, I would be happy for my opponent to consult the entire room and still still bet on him not mating!

posted on May 30, 2017chess

Tags

By year

  1. 2020 (1)
  2. 2019 (5)
  3. 2018 (3)
  4. 2017 (35)
  5. 2016 (16)
  6. 2015 (4)