12 Checkmates your players should know. Hi guys I continue in the vein of useful things coaches can do to improve their players. I call this 12 Checkmates players should know, but coaches should teach/coach their players pattern recognition and you can do this by working in themes. So the idea is to give your players a lot of practice in recognising these positions…that is pieces on the board. Players should try to see the pattern and look at how the major pieces are placed in order to achieve the checkmate. The puzzle/problems should be set up in such a way that the player can easily spot the solution. Now the player should look at marker indicators of which they make a mental ingrain, because the coach will expose them to enough examples. As the examples becomes more complexed/complicated or challenging as I like to call it, the player will still easily spot the solution as they know what to look for and their brain search for patterns and or ingrain marked indicators. The twelve checkmates are in no specific order, but these can easily be used as themes by coaches: King and queen mate Pawn mate Back-rank checkmate Diagonal checkmate Smothered mate Bishop and Knight fianchetto checkmate Anastacia’s mate Two bishops Queen and Bishop pin mate Queen and Bishop Queen and Rook Battery Rook and Bishop Checkmate On the next page you will find a worksheet with illustrations of the 12 checkmates. Enjoy! Till next time, burn the chess candle on both ends. .