The 10 Fastest Checkmate in Chess
If you are looking to play the fastest checkmate, then you have to be ready to take advantage of your opponent's mistake. Twenty-three percent of players miss a checkmate in one on move two! If you want more chess wins in your chess matches, then you have to be ready to play against the unexpected. Sometimes that unexpected is the gift of your new fastest checkmate. Here is a list of 10 of the fastest checkmates out there. Be familiar with these so you don’t get checkmated quickly, or miss an easy win.
1. Fool’s Mate
When it comes to the fastest checkmates, the “fool’s mate” is king, and the king is checkmated in two moves. The fool’s mate, and its pattern, are not completely unrealistic when playing beginner players. This checkmate can happen especially when beginners are playing and mindlessly pushing pawns. At the time of writing this article, the database on Lichess.com shows the position right before the checkmate being played as having been reached 43,362 times. The checkmate was only found 23% of the time! Make sure you recognize any time your opponent weakens their king.
Not every checkmate on this list has its own name and history, so what makes this particular checkmate so well known?
It’s All Greco to Me
The first time the fool’s mate was referenced as such was by an adapted work of early chess writer Gioachino Greco. He was the first to describe the opening as “The Fooles Mate” when his work, The Royal Game of Chess-Play, was adapted in 1656. Today kids all around are taught to avoid the fool’s mate.
2. Grob’s Attack
The fool’s mate can stem from white starting with 1.g4, also known as the Grob. First of all, don’t do that! It is known as one of the worst chess openings for a reason. Much like how the flushing toilet, or the John, was invented by Sir John Harrington, the Grob was named for Swiss champion and IM Henri Grob, who championed the opening extensively.
This checkmate is similar to the fool’s mate, with slight variations. I won’t include any more “fool’s mates” on this list, but always be wary of opening up your king with moves like g4!
3. An Unfortunate Epaulette
Have you ever played an illegal move in a game that completely changed the result? I have seen someone touch a piece that forces them to play a stalemate, but I’ve never seen anything as bad as number three on this list of fastest checkmates.
Supposedly, on move three the player playing white attempted to play their knight to c3 but mistakenly placed their bishop there instead. According to the rules at the time in the 1800’s, upon an illegal move, the opponent could make them make a king move instead, forcing white to play Ke2 and lose the game. Touch move is important!
Take Your Time in Chess Matches
It is amazing to me that this position before Qe4# has been reached on Lichess just over 8000 times, but the checkmate was only found 12% of the time! When your opponent has a weak king, take your time. There could be a strong attack in that position. Even when I change the filter to exclude lower-rated games, it’s not until I only look at players with an average rating of 2500 that Qe4# becomes the most commonly played move in the position with it just happening a few times.
[product skus="COMBOMAGNUS,B0091RE,CLKD3000LTD4. Scholar’s Mate
Scholar’s mate may be the most well-known checkmate in all of chess. I have beginner chess students who play me for the first time and they will try to play the scholars mate! Some players learn it and think they have learned a secret to winning chess games, and at the beginner level that can be true.
The scholar mate is also coined by Greco in the same writings, but what makes this mate one for scholars and the other for fools? I’m not sure, but this checkmate will also make you feel like a fool if you are getting checkmated in four moves. So how do you stop this mate?
Stopping Checkmate
Learning to stop the scholar’s mate is an important part of learning to play chess seriously. If a chess student of mine is about to play in their first tournament, they must know how to not get scholars mated!
This position, the wayward queen attack, has been reached on Lichess a total of 39,312,898 times! People will try to scholar’s mate you. So here is how to stop it.
First, when the queen comes out early, look at your opponent's threats. If they are attacking f7 twice, you must block the threat. In this position, the best move is to block the queen, with tempo, by playing g6.
However, the checkmate threats are not all gone! After the queen goes back to f3, if you are not careful you could still get checkmated on f7. So now black moves the knight to f6, again blocking the checkmate threat with the defended knight. After white develops a piece, black should play knight d4, attacking the queen and threatening a fork on c2.
Now the white queen must shamefully return to its starting square and rethink their life choices. That should be the downside to playing the scholar’s mate for white! You shouldn’t be able to bring your queen out that early without paying the tempo consequences.
5. Knight and Bishop Mate
I’m including this knight and bishop mate next because it is an attack on the f7 square like the scholar’s mate setup. This time instead of the queen and bishop, it is a knight and bishop.
Here the king is boxed in by its own pieces and gets mated in five moves by two minor pieces! This exact position hasn’t been reached too many times, but checkmates can happen quickly when the king is boxed in.
6. Smothered Checkmate in 3
The smothered checkmate is a favorite for many chess players. There is something extra satisfying about delivering a checkmate with a knight when the king cannot escape. How quickly can a smothered mate happen, though?
Perhaps white wanted to fianchetto their bishop, or maybe they wanted to go home a bit early, either way, g3 gets them smothered. Is this a particularly likely series of moves? No. But it has happened 153 times on Lichess with only 23% of players playing the mate.
7. Caro-Kahn Smothered Checkmate
This is a well-known trap against the Caro-Kahn where white just played queen e2 setting up the sneaky checkmate threat. If black moves their knight to f6, then there is a checkmate with Nd6! I know this trap well, as this was easily the quickest loss I ever had early in my OTB career. In this position white pays the checkmate a staggering 95% of the time! The checkmate has been played nearly 30,000 times on Lichess.
If you play the Caro-Kahn this needs to be on your radar! Anytime your king is boxed in by your pieces be wary.
8. A Lativian Countergambit
A six-move victory, turning the tables on your gambiting opponent. Black had a way out here before the final fatal mistake, but the position was winning for white after d6. This checkmate has been played over 1000 times on Lichess and could be a line worth looking into for playing against the Latvian Gambit.
9. A Perfectly Legal Checkmate
No list of quick checkmating patterns is complete without legal's mate! This is one of many checkmating patterns that is good to know. This isn’t the only way to get legal’s mate, but it is very flashy! Here white plays the ill-advised knight takes e5, seeming to hang the queen!
This is why I teach the difference between a relative pin and an absolute pin, because here the knight moves out of the pin and sets up legal’s mate. Black is actually better here if they don’t take the queen. Taking the queen leads to checkmate in two more moves for a nice seven-move checkmate and victory.
But if black cannot resist the temptation of a “free” queen, they will soon regret it. White will play the stunning mate in two starting with bishop taking on f7 check!
The only move left for black to play, even with the white queen in hand, is king e7. Then they are met with the game-ending knight d5 checkmate.
This is another trap where white almost always plays the checkmate since they set it up with the queen sacrifice. The final position has been reached almost 80,000 times with the final checkmate being played in that position essentially 100% of the time. No one is missing that one.
10. Greco’s Game
Here the scholar made his opponent look like a fool in this eight-move checkmate and queen sacrifice
Black has put themselves in this position by playing 6...Nf6 on Lichess over 11,000 times. White, though, has only followed Greco’s footsteps and played the mate in two 48% of the time. Some have opted for the still-winning g7+, but they don’t get the beautiful Bg6#.
Slow Down to Find More Fast Chess Wins
My main takeaway after looking through lots of quick checkmates for this article, was the amount of missed checkmates by players who had a win right in front of them! Whether it was from playing too quickly in those spots, or not expecting a checkmate so fast, the lesson is to slow down. Always look at your checks, and maybe you can find a checkmate that falls in your lap. Of course, if you are playing a checkmate trap, then I’m sure you will play the move instantly, just don’t pick up the wrong piece like with the unfortunate epaulette.