Chess checkmate patterns
What Is Anastasia's Mate in Chess?
Anastasia's mate is a checkmate in which a knight on e7 (or e2) cuts off a king on the h-file and a rook or queen mates along that file. The king's own pawn on g7 blocks its last escape square.
Example
1. Ne7+ Kh8 2. Qxh7+ Kxh7 3. Rh3#
Ne7+ drives the king to h8. Then Qxh7+ is a sacrifice that pulls the king to h7, and Rh3 is mate: the knight covers g8 and g6, the pawn on g7 blocks the king, and the rook covers the h-file.
How Anastasia's mate works
The knight on e7 controls g8 and g6. With the king on h7 and its own pawn on g7, the only squares left are on the h-file, and a rook or queen checking along that file takes them away. Nothing can block the check if the file is open and nothing can capture the rook.
The pattern is named after a novel in which the mate appears.
The queen sacrifice
The usual setup is a queen sacrifice on h7. The h-pawn is the piece that would otherwise stop the rook from checking along the h-file, so White removes it with the queen, the king has to recapture, and the rook swings over with mate. In the example, a rook on the third rank can reach h3 in one move.
Before sacrificing, check that the king cannot escape. If the knight is not on e7, or if Black's f8 rook has moved and f8 is free, the combination may fail.
How to spot and avoid it
As the attacker, look for a knight that can reach e7 with check and a rook that can reach the h-file in one move. As the defender, be wary when an enemy knight can land on e7 and your king can be pushed to the corner. Keeping a defender on the h-file or giving the king a square on f8 or g6 usually breaks the pattern.
Common questions
Can Anastasia's mate be given with a queen instead of a rook?
Yes. Any piece that gives check along the h-file, a rook or a queen, completes the pattern as long as the knight still covers g8 and g6.
How is it different from the Arabian mate?
In the Arabian mate, the king is in the corner and the knight protects the rook that checks next to it. In Anastasia's mate, the king is one square up the file and the knight only takes away escape squares.
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