Learn the basic mates — king and queen, rook, two bishops, bishop and knight — against a computer that never makes a defensive mistake.
Winning a won game is a skill of its own. Pick a set of pieces and you get a random position to convert: you play White, and Black defends with the move that keeps its king alive longest in every position. Mate it before the 50-move rule runs out. With the coach on, the distance to mate updates after every move, so you can see straight away which moves make progress and which only waste time.
Put your queen a knight's jump away from the enemy king. That shrinks its box without giving check, so keep shrinking until the king is stuck on the edge. Then stop and bring your own king over, because the queen can't mate on her own. Finish with a queen check on the edge, protected by your king. The classic trap is stalemate: before every quiet queen move, check that the black king still has a square to go to. Never more than 10 moves with best play.
Cut the king off along a rank or file with the rook, then walk your king towards it. When the two kings face each other with one square between them, a rook check pushes the enemy king back a line. If it steps aside instead, make a waiting move with the rook along its line and it has to come back. Repeat until the king reaches the edge, then mate along the edge. Up to 16 moves.
One rook guards a rank while the other checks on the next one. Then they leapfrog, rank by rank, until the king is pushed onto the back rank. You don't need your own king at all. If the enemy king gets close enough to attack a rook, swing that rook to the far side of the board and keep climbing. It never takes more than 7 moves.
Two bishops on neighbouring diagonals make a wall the king can't cross. Use the wall to herd the king towards a corner (any corner works) while your king comes up to cover the squares the bishops can't reach. The mate comes in the corner: one bishop gives check and the other covers the escape diagonal. Watch for stalemate as the box gets small. Up to 19 moves.
This is the hardest basic mate. You can only force it in a corner the same colour as your bishop. First drive the king to an edge with all three pieces working together. If it runs to the wrong corner, use the W-manoeuvre: the knight hops in a W pattern while the bishop holds a diagonal, and the king gets pushed along the edge to the right corner. Perfect play needs up to 33 moves, which is well inside the 50-move rule once you know the method.
In theory the queen wins, but this one is famously hard. Push the defending king to the edge and aim for the Philidor position, where a quiet queen move leaves Black in zugzwang. The rook has to leave its king, and then a fork or skewer picks it off. The defender will try rook checks and stalemate tricks, and one careless queen move can lose her to a skewer. Up to 35 moves with best play.
Yes. Every possible position in these six endings has been solved in advance, so the computer knows exactly how many moves each position is from checkmate. On its turn it always picks the move that puts off mate the longest. The same knowledge drives the coach: the Mate in number is the true fastest mate from the current position, not an estimate.
The solved positions load once into your browser, and every move is worked out on your own device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
If both players make 50 moves in a row with no capture and no pawn move, the game is a draw. That is why technique matters in these endings: you have to get the mate done in time, not just eventually. The Draw in counter shows how many moves you have left. It resets when a piece is captured, for example when you win the rook in queen vs rook.
Start with king and queen, then king and rook. Both come up constantly in real games, and they teach the core idea behind every mate here: shrink the box the enemy king can move in. The two-rook ladder takes a minute to learn. Two bishops and bishop + knight are rarer over the board, but they are excellent training in making pieces work together. Queen vs rook is for when the others feel easy.
A single bishop or a single knight can never mate a lone king, so those games are drawn on the spot for insufficient material. Two knights can only mate if the defender blunders into it, because there is no way to force it. That is why neither appears here. Every ending on this page is a forced win from almost any starting position.
Your best result in each ending is saved on this device only, with no account needed.
Not necessarily. Most positions have several moves that keep the win, and a slower one just adds a move or two to the finish. Real mistakes are the moves that throw the win away: stalemate, leaving a piece where the king can take it, or drifting until the 50-move rule runs out. When that happens, use Undo to see where it went wrong.
