How to Checkmate with King and Queen

If you keep winning material in a game, you can end up with your king and queen against a lone king. On material it is a huge win. Even so, many beginners cannot finish it from here, and the game drifts into a draw while they keep giving check.

According to the Wikipedia article on Checkmate, king and queen against king can be forced to mate in at most ten moves from any starting position. Once you know the method, it is not hard. This post splits that method into four steps. The positions and moves below are ones I set up and checked myself.

The queen cannot do it alone

The first thing to know is that a queen alone cannot checkmate a king. If the queen checks from a distance, the king usually has a square to run to. If the queen checks from right next to the king, it takes away more squares, but with nothing protecting it, the king simply captures it.

So the finish always needs your own king. The method has four steps.

Use the queen to build a box around the enemy king
Shrink the box and push the king to the edge of the board
Bring your own king closer
Deliver mate

Giving check is not the goal. Taking squares away quietly, without check, is usually faster.

1. Build the box

The queen covers files, ranks and diagonals all the way across the board, so on its own it can cut the board into parts. The enemy king cannot cross the file or the rank the queen stands on. The area on the far side of those lines is the king’s box.

Here is the example.

Position 1: White king on e1, white queen on d4. Black king on e6. Black to move.

The queen controls the d-file and the 4th rank, so the black king is shut inside the 16 squares from the e- to h-files and the 5th to 8th ranks. Its legal moves are e7, f7 and f5.

The important detail is that the queen stands a knight’s move away from the king. From d4 to e6 is exactly a knight’s jump. From there the queen is not too close, does not give check, and still holds two sides of the box.

2. Shrink the box and push to the edge

From now on, every time the black king moves, the queen follows to the same knight’s-move spot. When the king steps right or up, the queen steps with it, and the box gets smaller.

Here is one line from Position 1 where Black tries to stay near the middle.

Black Kf5, White Qe3. The box is now the f- to h-files, ranks 4 to 8
Black Kg4, White Qf2. The box is the g- and h-files, ranks 3 to 8
Black Kg5, White Qf3
Black Kg6, White Qf4
Black Kg7, White Qf5. The black king can only go to g8, h6 or h8
Black Kh6, White Qg4. The black king is now on the h-file edge
Black Kh7, White Qg5

At this point the black king can only shuttle between h7 and h8. The queen covers the whole g-file and the diagonal from g5 to h6.

I think the “follow at a knight’s move” rule suits beginners. There is little to calculate and no risk of leaving the queen hanging. It is not the shortest route, and you may need a few more than ten moves, but I would choose the safe method over the fast one.

3. Stop the queen here

Once the king is on the edge, stop chasing with the queen. This is the most important switch in the whole ending.

In the position above, if the black king is on h8 and White tries to shrink the box once more with the queen to g6, the black king cannot go to h7, g7 or g8, and it is not in check. That is stalemate, a draw. A cornered king with the queen a knight’s move away is the classic case I described in Stalemate Explained. The knight’s-move method is also the method where you must not follow on the very last move.

Leave the queen on g5 and give the black king its two squares, h7 and h8. Meanwhile, walk your king over.

Black Kh8, White Kf2
Black Kh7, White Kf3
Black Kh8, White Kf4
Black Kh7, White Kf5
Black Kh8, White Kf6

Each time your king steps forward, check that the black king still has a move. In this line it can always go back and forth between h7 and h8, so there is no stalemate.

4. Deliver mate

The white king has reached f6. When Black plays Kh7, White mates with Qg7.

The queen on g7 gives check right next to the king on h7, but the white king on f6 protects g7, so the black king cannot take it. The queen’s diagonals cover h8 and h6, and it also covers g6 and g8. There is no escape, so it is checkmate. If the black king is on h8 instead, Qg7 is mate the same way.

Two mating patterns are enough to remember.

The protected queen next to the king. This is the Qg7 pattern above. Put the queen right in front of the king on the edge, protected by your own king.

Check along the edge rank. With the black king on e8 and the white king on e6, any queen check along the 8th rank is mate. For example, with the queen on b1, Qb8 is mate. The queen covers d8 and f8 on the 8th rank, and the white king on e6 covers d7, e7 and f7. The kings face each other with one square between them, and the queen closes the edge.

Mind the fifty-move rule

The FIDE Laws of Chess let a player claim a draw after fifty moves by each side with no pawn move and no capture. If you only keep giving check, you creep toward that limit. With the four steps above you finish in far fewer moves than fifty.

How to practise

This ending does not change no matter how well the defender plays, so it is easy to practise on your own. Put a white king and queen and a black king anywhere on a board, play Black’s moves yourself, and work through the four steps until mate. For Black, try to stay in the middle of the board as long as you can. Once it feels easy, count your moves and try to get closer to ten.

If you set up the position against a computer in any chess app or site that lets you place pieces freely, it will choose the most stubborn defence, which is a little closer to a real game.

Daily mate practice

Chess365 is a checkmate puzzle app with 1,000 puzzles each of mate in 2, 3, 4 and 5. You always play White, you can make any legal move, and Black answers with the most stubborn defence. Many solutions are quiet moves that are not checks, like the queen moves in this post. You can play a move that stalemates Black, but that line counts as a failure and the app shows its own explanation.

How to start with mate puzzles is in Chess checkmate puzzles for beginners, material and trades are in Chess piece values, and how to use the app is in Getting Started with Chess365.