How often do checkmate patterns show up on the board?

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Nivamo

Dec 18, 2022

I am interested in maybe starting to study Raf Mesotten's: The Checkmate Patterns Manual

This book focuses on patterns like: Anastasia's mate, Greco's mate, Arabian mate, Vuković's mate, Morphy's mate, Pillsbury's mate, Max Lange's mate, Dovetail mate, Blackburne's mate, etc....

I am curious if these patterns show up often in games, or are they very rare to actually happen over the board.

And if these checkmates are very rare, is it then smart to spend considerable time going over all the puzzle sections in this book that focus solely on these patterns or is a general tactics book more suitable for me?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Ziryab

Dec 18, 2022

Some patterns are rare, while others happen with great frequency. All are well-worth your time learning. I don’t know about Raf Mesotten's book, but I have some excellent books on checkmate patterns and have found they have helped my game. The best books IMHO are The Art of the Checkmate by Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn, and 1000 Checkmate Combinations by Victor Henkin. The latter is not only a checkmate pattern book, but in many ways a complete course on tactics.

This guy’s reviews are a useful guide:

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2021/11/learning-checkmate-or-teaching-it.html

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2022/02/two-old-books-and-one-new.html

blueemu

Dec 18, 2022

Nivamo wrote:

I am interested in maybe starting to study Raf Mesotten's: The Checkmate Patterns Manual

This book focuses on patterns like: Anastasia's mate, Greco's mate, Arabian mate, Vuković's mate, Morphy's mate, Pillsbury's mate, Max Lange's mate, Dovetail mate, Blackburne's mate, etc....

I am curious if these patterns show up often in games, or are they very rare to actually happen over the board.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

It depends on what you mean by "show up on board". Does it count if the opponent has to choose between being smothered mated, being epaulette mated, or enter a lost ending?