Scholar’s Mate

Scholars Mate

At today’s Chess Club meeting, we showed a video on how to anticipate and defend against the Scholar’s Mate.  The Scholar’s Mate is sometimes referred to as the “Four-Move Checkmate”, although there are other ways to checkmate in four moves.  We also introduced the students to the “Squares of Doom”, which are the weakest squares on the chess board, F2 and F7, because they are only defended by the King.  The Scholar’s Mate uses this weakness of the square of doom to checkmate the King.

The Scholar’s Mate is known by different names in other countries:

  • In some languages, including French, Turkish, German, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese: Shepherd’s Mate
  • In Italian: Barber’s Mate
  • In Persian, Greek and Arabic: Napoleon’s Plan
  • In Russian: Children’s Mate
  • In Polish, Danish, German, Croatian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovakian and Hebrew: Shoemaker’s Mate
  • In Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish: School Mate
  • In Esperanto: Stultula Mato

Chesskid.com Opening Traps: Scholar’s Mate  Video Link that shows examples on how to defend if your opponent bring out their Bishop first.

A followup video is also recommended to watch where they show how to defend if your opponent bring out their Queen first.