Simple but Often Overlooked: The Arabian Mate
Welcome to what I hope will be an interesting collections of posts about our mutual hobby – chess.
Although I have played chess since I was a teenager, I was poorly schooled in chess tactics until recently – in part, thanks to the tactics trainer on Chess.com. Learning more about basic checkmates is an area where most players can improve. One checkmate, in particular, has caught my attention: the Arabian Mate.
The mate is simple, sometimes so simple that it’s not discovered during a game, particularly a blitz when time pressures mount as the clock advances quickly. In a recent online blitz tournament game, I completely missed it and went instead to grab the opponent’s queen in a knight fork.
For the traditional Arabian Mate, all that is needed is a rook and knight when the opponent’s king is a corner of the chessboard. The knight defends the rook, while the rook gives checkmate to the opponent’s king as illustrated below.
In the online blitz game, I saw a discovered check that could be created if I moved a knight to attack the opponent’s queen. After 23 moves, the board position is as illustrated below. See if you can find a mate in 1.
What I missed was the opportunity to end the game with Arabian Mate. Although I had plenty of time on the clock (4:44) remaining for a 10-minute game, I rushed my move and jumped the knight on g6 to e5 to capture the opponent's queen on d7. Keeping the knight in place on g6 where it is protected by my queen, I should have moved the rook to h8: Checkmate! Oh well, I hope I have learned my lesson and will be more vigilant next time.
Ray Linville’s high point as a chess player occurred when he swiped the queen of GM Hikaru Nakamura in a 60-second bullet game in 2021. This game was reported in a “My Best Move” column of the Chess Life magazine, published by the U.S. Chess Federation.
At Chess.com, he has been an editor (part-time) since 2019 and has edited news articles and tournament reports—including those of the Candidates and World Championship Tournaments and other major events—by titled players and noted chess writers as well as Game of the Day annotations by leading grandmasters. He has also been a contributing writer of chess terms, e-books, and general interest articles for ChessKid.com.
He enjoys “top blogger” status at Chess.com. His blog has won the award for Best Chess Blog from the Chess Journalists of America for several years. In addition, he has also been the recipient of first-place CJA awards for feature article, humorous contribution, online review, and educational lesson as well as honorable mention in the categories of personal narrative and historical article.