How To Checkmate With Only A Rook And A Knight

Even if you’ve only played a single match of chess, you’ve seen a checkmate. The odds of the only match in someone’s whole life ending in a draw are drastically low.

Besides, most beginners don’t even know the situations in which a match ends in a draw and may consider a stalemate as a defeat.

If you’re not used to the chess lingo, a stalemate is a situation in which the opponent’s king is not under threat but cannot make any moves without ending in check.

Since the king cannot be put in harm intentionally, a stalemate ends the game with a draw, due to the impossibility of movement.

Stalemates have even been used strategically by highly experienced players who were facing an imminent defeat and, in order to score the half point awarded for a draw instead of the zero points they get for a defeat, intentionally move their pieces with the intention of causing the situation.

However similar, a stalemate is not the same as a checkmate.

Can I Checkmate With Any Piece?

A chess match begins with 32 pieces on the board and among the 16 pieces each player has at the starting point only one cannot checkmate the opponent’s king.

Ironically, the only piece that cannot perform the most important move of the game is exactly the most valuable one. As you probably already realized by now, we’re talking about the king.

While, on one hand, the king is the most important piece on the board and the one that requires the most protection, as with its capture the game ends, on the other hand, it is the most vulnerable due to the same reason.

So, if you’re facing a material disadvantage, make sure to keep at least a few of your major pieces, e.g. rook, knight, bishop, and queen so you still have a decent shot at a checkmate.

The story behind this rule is that one of the most important rules of chess state that the king can never be intentionally put in danger and, in order to checkmate with a king, you could have to deliberately put it under threat.

With the conflict between the rule and the possible attacking move, the checkmate with the king was then forbidden.

How To Checkmate With Rook And Knight

Is It Possible To Checkmate Using Only One Rook And One Knight?

Considering that the only piece that cannot be used to checkmate is the king, there are possible combos that end the game with any other pair of pieces.

For that matter, it is even possible to checkmate using only pawns, although that is an extremely rare scenario. Pawns are more effective once they are promoted.

So, the answer to the question is yes, it is possible. Even though the queen and the bishops are more largely used to promote checkmates due to both their vertical movement and larger range, it’s perfectly possible to checkmate using only a rook and a knight.

The advantage of saving the knight for the endgame stage is that it can jump over other pieces, which can aid quite a lot in coming up with checkmate combos.

The rooks, in their turn, start in a quite hidden position and are normally the last pieces to join the battle. Since they’re the only ones that can castle with the king, rooks are normally kept at bay until further stages of the match.

However, once they are set in more central positions, rooks are of great help for attacking stances.

Therefore, a checkmate with a rook and a knight is entirely possible and it is called an Arabian Mate. This checkmate has a few variations but all of them involve using the rook to force the cornered king into moving to a square that can be attacked by the knight.

It’s a highly efficient checkmate move, but due to the fact that the king needs to be cornered, it may not be so easy to perform.

Finally, should your first attempt fail, keep forcing the cornering of the king while moving the knight toward the final attacking position and you should eventually reach the Arabian Mate.