How to Identify basic mates ?

After my previous articles on basic mating patterns and basic tactics puzzles, I hope you'll have a some understanding of how to approach middle game chess. Finding tactics, seeing how vulnerable the enemy king is, which piece can attack the king and thus deliver checkmate!

So today I'll put up some puzzles and hints along with it as to how to approach each of the puzzles. They will be for players rated below 1400, relatively easy but a bit tougher than the previous articles.

1. White to play. Find the strongest continuation for white (1 move) after which black resigns. As it is forced mate in 2 moves, or 3 moves black can delay mate. Things to identify here.

• a. Both queens attacked.
• b. If white moves his bishop then black queen pinned to the king, can move only on g-file.
• c. Black's king is cut off from f file by rook on f2 

2. White to play and checkmate in 2.Things to identify

• a. Black's king is scooped in the corner h8 square. packed
• b. Knight on f6 guards, h7 and g8
• c. g8 has 2 defenders rook on g7 and king on h8
• d. g8 is attacked twice by rook on h3(x-rayed) and Kinght on f6e. h7 is attacked twice
• All the squares above spoken of are the squares adjacent to the King.
• Our aim here is to some how remove any one protector of either sqaure to make that weak and check mate there with Queen or Rook.

3. White to play. Find a strong continuation (1 move) for white here, so that either material is won/ checkmate threat given.
Here I'll show an example of a tactic called as 'Deflection Tactics'.

• The black queen on g5 protects the rook on d8 and knight on g4. This makes the black queen 'overloaded'
• The rook on d8 who is the sole defender of the back rank mate is attacked by rook on d2.
• So it is a good weakness to take advantage of. Let's see if you can find the move to force black's queen away from the defence of rook on d8.Solve this one to know details of each move in the solution!!

4. More on deflection tactics. White to play and checkmate in 2 !!Things to identify

• a. Overloaded queen!!! defence of diagonal e5-h8 and defence of rook on b8
• b. Black king can be trapped with those 2 bishops adjacent diagonals, checkmating him.

5. And the last one for the day!White to play and win tactically. Win material...

• Tactics involved, forks!
• Threats : Checkmating threat

So that's all for today, Thanks for viewing the puzzles.Hope they were interesting to solve.I'll be posting more for Tactical Tuesdays tomorrow.Stay tuned for more such posts.

Continue playing, Enjoy learning !!
Feedbacks, comments, shares much appreciated.

Follow my blog, isolatedqueenpawn.blogspot.in for more such posts
Thanks !!