Scholar's checkmate

THE SCHOLAR'S CHECKMATE

Just like the fool's mate, scholar's mate is a bit similar, the differences are

1. Black can only do the fool's mate.
2. While the scholar's mate is 4 moves, fool's mate is 2 moves.
3. In scholar's mate, you take your bishop to Bc4 in the 2nd move, but in the fool's mate, you take your pawn to g4, etc...

The same things are

1. Both of the mates take only a couple of moves, while other checkmates take more moves to deliver a checkmate, and more...

So here are the notations, of you don't know how to do, use these notations and try them out on our Lichess analysis board.

1. e4 e5
2. Bc4 Nc6
3. Qh5 Nf6
4. Qxf7#

So, as you see, in the 3rd move, black moves to Nf6 so that the queen is under attack, but doesn't notice how checkmate can be done in one move.

Besides that, if you're black, how to escape from this scholar's mate?
Well, after the queen moves to h5, realize that of queen take your pawn on f7, you're checkmated, move you're knight to h6, so even if the white queen captured that pawn, you can take the queen with your knight
OR
Move your pawn to g6, so that the queen can't go to f7
OR
Move your Queen(black) to e7, which protects both the squares f7 and e5.
OR
Move your Queen to f6, which also protects both the passengers on f7 and e5.

So, let's say your black and your opponent as white, is very impatient and wants to finish the game very quickly by doing the scholar's mate, but you teach him a lesson by taking his bishop. And if you're thinking "What? Teaching a lesson by taking his bishop? That's useless!", you're wrong, because without the light-squared bishop, no piece is going to support the white queen, so, have a look at the notations below

1. e4 e5
2. Bc4 Nc6
3. Qh5 g6
4. Qg4 d5
5. Qd1 dxc4

As you see, when black plays g6, the queen can't deliver checkmate, so let's say the queen moves to g4, grumpily. Then you move to d5. So here, the e4 pawn, bishop and queen of white are all under attack. Obviously, some wouldn't notice the pawn and bishop attack, so they might take their queen back to it's home, d1. Then you take the bishop. Even after that, of the scholar's mate was possible, you would need your bishop. Or if your opponent is in a hurry-burry, he might not notice the queen attack( bishop on c8 ), he/she might just play exd4 or Bxd4 thinking you're not smart and you would capture that pawn or bishop with your queen. Still, after that, the queen is hanging(white), so you would just take your bishop from c8 to the Bishop's vacation place, g4, by Bxg4!

So know I'm pretty sure whoever read this understood the scholar's mate.

And my next blog post will be...

... En passant!

Bye!