Hi there.
In this lecture, we're going to have a look at a simplified chess position when you're heavily up in
material and this is a must know situation for how to checkmate the opponent's king.
If you ever reach this situation, they might think, well, hold on, King Squasher, how do I get
this position?
How do I even practice?
Well, you know what you just set up with a friend of yours just to practice.
Both of you should practice mating with the queen and work against each other.
Just set it up as an example.
Possession.
You don't have to start from the initial position of chess of all the pieces.
Capablanca is one of the great world champions of the game, and he recommended to beginners to actually
start from the end games to learn and games first, then the middle game, then later openings.
He had a points because if you don't really know how to finish off the opponents, it's kind of pointless.
You gain an advantage in the opening and then carrying it through to the middle guy and then you can't
use it to finish off the opponent.
So say you set this up with a friend's queen rook against King.
You should really know how to do this.
The first easy thing to do if you don't waste any moves is just simply restrict the opponent's king
with a move like this queen C7.
So we've actually restricted escape squares with the king, but importantly, the king still has one
or two moves.
Otherwise it would be stalemate.
So make sure the king still has one or two moves.
When you don't move like this, you don't want to risk so-called stalemating the opponents king as long
as they got one or two moves now that they're restricted and they move the king either here or here,
the move here, you just bring the rook up and it's Jack and they can't escape.
So this is a really important checkmate.
The king cannot escape from that check.
So that's checkmate.
So, yeah, sets up this possession of a friend.
Stop practicing these essential kind of engi musicians.
You should both be able to win with the queen and rook for sure, especially in this situation.
And this is pretty quick because the Kings already on the back row.
So I hope you've you can master this one.
So Queen up, restrict the opponents king.
And quite often this technique, even in the middle game, all the opening is, is the process, the
art of checkmate as you get more and more advanced in the middle game, you see, hang on.
The King hasn't got that many so-called escape squares here.
We've cut down on the so-called escape sequence where the king can escape to from a potential chag.
So in a way, you're making your check much more effective than it would have been.
That's quite often valuable in the middle game as well as a general principle.
Reduce escape squares can be more important than an immediate check.
Quite often there's a great temptation just to check, check, check, check, check.
But sometimes restricting the opponent's can makes much more effective unescapable.
Check where after the check mate, so to speak.
That's the thing.
The ultimate game goal to checkmate the opponents king.
So Queen C7 in this case, in this and this simple example, we've made sure that the King still has
got one or two escape squares.
So I'll show you some other examples, variations of this queen and rook versus king just for you to
reinforce and get some other ideas.
And they are valuable for your your middle game and your opening.
So bear in mind, this is really valuable stuff which you can apply to other parts of the game as well.
OK, so I hope this example you can practice with friends, you're restricting the opponents, king
and then your chat meeting with the rook.
OK, let's watch.