Check and checkmate in chess, and the 4 move checkmate
Check means your king is under attack and you have to deal with it on this move, before anything else. Checkmate means your king is under attack and there is nothing you can do about it, so the game is over. That one difference is the whole of chess. Below there is a live board for each situation, including how to checkmate in four moves and how to stop someone doing it to you.
What is check in chess?
A king is in check when an enemy piece is attacking the square it stands on. Nothing happens to the king itself: it is not captured, it does not come off the board, and check is not a score. It is a demand. Your next move has to be one that leaves your king safe, and no other move is legal until it is.
That last part catches beginners more than anything else on this page. You cannot ignore check to grab a free queen somewhere else, you cannot castle out of it, and you cannot move your king onto a square an enemy piece already covers. You also cannot move a piece that is currently shielding your king, if moving it would expose the king. On the boards here, those moves are simply not offered.
The three ways out of check
There are exactly three, and if none of them works it is checkmate. Run through them in this order every time.
- Move the king to a square nothing attacks. Always available in principle, but often there is nowhere to go.
- Block the attack by putting one of your pieces between the attacker and your king. Impossible against a knight, which jumps, and impossible against a piece standing right next to the king.
- Capture the attacking piece with anything, including the king itself, as long as that piece is not defended.
Double check, where two pieces attack the king at once, is the exception worth remembering: blocking and capturing can only deal with one attacker, so moving the king is the only answer.
What is checkmate?
Checkmate is check with no way out. The king is attacked, it has nowhere safe to stand, nothing can get in the way, and the attacker cannot be taken. The game ends immediately and the player who delivered it wins. The king is still never captured; chess stops one move short of it.
So check and checkmate are the same attack with a different answer. Check is a problem to solve this move. Checkmate is the problem you could not solve. There is a third thing they get confused with: if a player has no legal move at all but is not in check, that is not a win but a draw, covered in stalemate and draws.
The 4 move checkmate, step by step
The four move checkmate, often called scholar's mate, is the fastest mate a beginner is likely to meet. White plays 1. e4, and after 1... e5 brings the bishop to c4 and the queen to h5. Both of those pieces now point at f7. Black defends the centre with 2... Nc6 and develops with 3... Nf6, neither of which does anything about f7, and 4. Qxf7 is mate.
It works because f7 is the weakest square on black's side of the board at move one. It is the only square defended by nothing but the king, and a king is a poor defender: when the queen lands there the king cannot take her, because the bishop on c4 is guarding her from a distance. The black king then has no square to run to: its own pieces occupy d8 and f8, the pawn on d7 blocks the escape, and the queen covers e7. The same idea, with an early queen aimed at f7 or f2, is behind most very short games between new players, and it stops working the moment the other player knows about it.
How to stop the 4 move checkmate
Watch for the queen and the bishop pointing at the same square, then take one of them away. The pawn move g6 does it by blocking the h5 to f7 diagonal at g6, and it attacks the queen at the same time, so she has to move again while black develops. The other answer, Qe7, adds a defender to f7. White can still play Qxf7 there, but the black queen takes back, and when the dust settles white has traded a bishop for a pawn.
There is a habit underneath both moves: look at what the other player's last move attacks before you make your own. A queen out on move two or three is nearly always aimed at f7 or f2. Develop your knights and bishops, castle early, and the mate never gets started. The best opening moves cover that in order.
How to checkmate: the patterns worth knowing
Every checkmate is the same job: cover every square around the enemy king while attacking the square it stands on. Three patterns handle most of the games you will play.
The back-rank mate is the common one. A king that has castled sits behind three unmoved pawns, and if none of them has been pushed the king has no escape upwards, so a rook or queen arriving on that back row is mate on its own. The cure is to push one pawn and give the king a hole to breathe through.
Queen and king against a lone king is the ending you reach most often after winning material. The queen walks the enemy king to the edge, staying a knight's move away from it so it is never stalemated, and your own king comes up to support her before she delivers the mate, as on the board above. She cannot do it alone, which is why the king has to travel.
Two rooks are the easiest of the three: one cuts the king off along a row, the other checks it, and each time the king steps back a row the rooks swap jobs. That ladder needs no king of your own at all.
Check is not a win
Beginners chase checks because a check feels like progress. It usually is not. A check the other player answers easily hands them a free move and often drives their king somewhere safer than where it was. Play one when it wins something or leads somewhere.
Checkmate is the win, and everything else on the board is arranged to make that one position possible. If you are not sure whether a game is over, the boards here say so: the status line under each one reads Check, Checkmate, Stalemate or Draw. The rest of the rules of chess is one level up.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between check and checkmate?
Check means the king is attacked and you must answer it on this move. Checkmate means the king is attacked and no answer exists, so the game ends and the attacker wins.
Do you have to say check?
No. Saying it is a friendly habit, not a rule, and it is not said in tournaments. The check is on the board whether or not anyone announces it.
Can you checkmate with a king?
Not by itself, because the two kings can never stand next to each other. A king helps deliver mate constantly, though, by covering the squares the enemy king would escape to while another piece attacks it.
What is the fastest checkmate in chess?
Two moves, and only black can do it: 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4 is mate. It is called fool's mate, and it needs white to open the diagonal to h4 with both f3 and g4, so it almost never happens outside a demonstration.
Can you castle out of check?
No. Castling is never a legal answer to check, and the king cannot pass through or land on an attacked square either, so the castling rules and the check rules rule each other out in both directions.
What happens if you do not notice you are in check?
The move is illegal and has to be taken back and replaced with a legal one. On this site the question does not arise: a move that leaves your own king in check is never offered.
Is checkmate the only way to win?
No. A player can resign at any time, and in games with clocks a player can lose on time. Checkmate is the only way to win on the board itself, which is why most games between friends end with one person seeing it coming and giving up.
Now play it
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