Don't worry about it, if you can consistantly mate, that's good enough.
You can normally mate a bit shorter just by cutting off the king as much as possible and bringing your king in at the right time, but you don't get extra points.
I use the knight rule because it doesn't involve thinking and can be done quickly, even though I could often probably mate quicker.
This knight space rule which I have never heard of reminds me of the
GM Smirnov advice that 5 rules is better than 1000 rules.
If your goal is to mate in the least number of moves I would think that it is impossible to checkmate the king unless it is on one of the 4 sides of the board.
You cannot checkmate with only one of the 2 pieces (king or queen alone).
Therefore, use both pieces to make the enemy king move to the side of the board it is closest to.
yep...whats wht I normally do, with queen having a knight space from the king and try to put the king in a corner before checkmating by bringing my king forward.But check this out:
http://www.chess.com/computer-workout/
Select mating with a queen. I don't understand the manner in which this guy moves his king
Just uses zugzwang, puts black in a position where he has to move to the side of the board from where the queen can deliver mate.
U can just cut off the king by walking with your king and then cut with the queen the escape squares for the enemy king. Just cut more squares by moving your queen diagonally to a corner of the board and keep your king close to your queen. That's how I do it.
The same thing applies for the rook but the ending is a bit more tricky then with the queen.
The one given in comp workout in chess.com, says that it can be done in 9 moves. But it takes me 13 to 14 moves using the knight space rule. How do I imagine with a 9 move checkmate?? IS there any algorithm to it?