How to Checkmate with the Rook & the Knight in Chess

    We’re going to running a series on how to checkmate with a variety of chess pieces. Today, we’ll be covering how to checkmate with the rook and the knight in chess.   Checkmating with the rook and the knight comes up fairly often in the game of chess.

For beginner’s, it can be very confusing as how to achieve checkmate with the knight and rook. Even for some advanced players, it can still be a tricky checkmate. It’s very good to know how to achieve this type of checkmate in order to avoid a potential stalemate, when it should be a victory. However, keep in kind as it is possible to checkmate with only the King & the rook, just think of the knight as a bonus piece.  

How to Checkmate with the Rook & the Knight

  As you can see from the photo above, the key to a rook and knight checkmate is to get your opponent’s king into the corner of the chessboard, and have the rook placing the king in the final checkmate, with the knight guarding the rook’s diagonal, in this case, g8.  

This does not have to be in that particular corner on the chessboard, so long as the rook places the king in checkmate and the knight is in the same position but on the opposite end of the chessboard.  

Setting up the Rook & Knight Checkmate

  With the use of the rook, it can be fairly simple to trap the King into the corner of the chessboard. Using the rook, push the king onto the 7 or 8 rank of the chessboard. Once he is there, begin moving him toward a corner where the king can be trapped. For this particular checkmate in the photo above, the final move would be placing the rook on space h7.

Again, this is not the only way to checkmate with a knight and rook. It is possible to checkmate the King with the knight and the rook on space D8 as well for example. However, it makes things much more simple to trap the King in the corner, as opposed to the center of the chessboard. 

Other Articles:

Learn How to Play Chess

Learn Basic Chess Strategy 

How to Checkmate in 2 Moves (Fool’s Mate)

How to Checkmate in 3 Moves

How to Checkmate in 4 Moves (Scholar’s Mate)

How to Checkmate in 5 Moves

How to Castle in Chess