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Today, I’m going to talk about a tactic and warning – back rank checkmates! As the saying goes, “it’s never too late to hang back rank mate”! On chess.com’s exercises and puzzles, many of them involve patterns of back rank mates. I’ve succumb to these many times when I was rated below 1000. Once you reach the intermediate stage, it’s less likely that you miss the obvious back rank mates, but nonetheless, it can still occur. In today’s game, I managed to win by checkmate, a back rank mate, from a completely losing position down 7 points of material! How did this happen? If you keep creating threats, especially mate in 1 type threats at the beginner-intermediate level, the opponent might eventually blunder a mistake!

In this game, I straight up blundered a full piece, a knight, on move 5 and was basically in a losing position for the entire match. And so, I opted to take a hyperaggressive approach, sacrificing material like the romantic period of chess was in full swing. At one point, I was down 11 points of material, but then, my opponent started to crack under the pressure. First, they blundered their knight, forgotting that their pawn was pinned. And then, they forgot that they needed their rook to guard the back rank! In my next video on Wednesday, I’ll talk about a recent game where this situation was reversed – I was completely winning, but was so focussed on my attack, and spooked by my opponent’s counterplay, I blunder and lose to a back rank mate myself!

I hope you found this game interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/43817116929

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.04.15"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "Mirzatillaev"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B18"]
[WhiteElo "1390"]
[BlackElo "1232"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "20:32:13 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Nf3 Bxe4 6. Ng5 Bg6 7. Bc4 e6 8. O-O Bd6 9. f4 Ne7 10. Bd3 O-O 11. Bxg6 Nxg6 12. Qh5 h6 13. Rf3 Qf6 14. Ne4 Qxd4+ 15. Be3 Qxe4 16. Rd1 Bxf4 17. Bxf4 Nxf4 18. Rxf4 Qxf4 19. Rf1 Qd4+ 20. Kh1 Nd7 21. c3 Qd2 22. h3 Nf6 23. Qh4 Nd5 24. Rf3 Rad8 25. Rg3 Qxb2 26. Qxh6 Qb1+ 27. Kh2 Qh7 28. Qg5 Nf6 29. Qxf6 Rd2 30. a4 Rfd8 31. Qe7 R8d7 32. Qe8# 1-0