Checkmate Patterns: The shortcuts of the mind!

What are checkmate patterns? How do they work?

According to Cognitive Psychology, our minds tend to make meaning of everything we perceive. So, leaving photographic memory aside, if you read a sentence, you remember the meaning of it, and not the exact words; if you analyze a chess position, you "code" the location of the pieces in the board according to what connects them and what they are doing together, and not just the squares they are in.

Checkmate patterns are recognizable configurations of attacking pieces that are effective to mate the enemy king, some more frequent than others. By studying them; each chess player builds a database of reusable configurations (not exact positions) that gets stored in his/her memory.

How is this useful?

Let’s assume a situation in which two chess players are forced to finish up an attack in one move with seconds on the clock.

Player number 1 has studied checkmate patterns, unconsciously retrieves from his memory the configuration he/he can apply to the position on the board; calculates maybe two moves that are more likely to succeed, and finds checkmate on move number two.

Player number 2 isn ́t familiarized with mate patterns and needs to calculate all the possible checks randomly, and, unless he/she is lucky, time runs out.

So, be smart! Study checkmate patterns!

How about some puzzles to practice?

Increasing level of difficulty! We wonder how many of you will solve the last two...

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