Best way to get checkmate?

I have won a few chess games by similar endgame methods as the one showed below. However, this strategy doesn't always work and I am curious to know if there are better strategies for ending chess games.

There are many ways to get checkmate. Checkmate is checkmate right? Isn't that good enough? You can't exactly say that you have a taste for certain kinds of ways to win.

Just to make sure, have you studied the standard chekmates with king+queen or king+rook against lone king? If not, I recomend you do.

Besides that one should do lot of tactical exercises because that way you get to see many different mating patterns and learn also to recognize them in your own games. You can for example use the tactics trainer application here but it's probably possible to get more structured aproach by buing a suitable book or program about elementary tactics.

Thanks. I would just like to know what strategy people thought would be best to obtain checkmate.

Well, the closest thing to a "standard" mate I can think of is getting ahead in material, trading pieces in a way so you can promote a pawn and then use the K+Q vs. K mate.

Interesting.

In the middle game you often see "mating nets" meaning you take away escape squares, only playing a check when it's mate or leading to mate.

So this means if you're attacking a king on g8 to make sure it can't run to f8,e8, and out of your kingside attack.

[edit] ok so I found a good place that shows different named mates http://mysite.verizon.net/webmasterfrank/patterns/names.htm

So what your saying is that you close off the other kings escape routes one square at a time?

It's important to note that beyond trying to take all the squares away chess players don't have a general strategy, like tonydal said it's tactics.  You can find many tactic puzzles online to help sharpen your eye for when a mate is available, there are also books like Reinfeld's "1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate" they aren't actually 1001 different strategies, but they're 1000+ puzzles to train checkmating patterns, many patterns repete and show up in your games, which makes it so effective.  To see some different types of mates you can follow this link http://mysite.verizon.net/webmasterfrank/patterns/names.htm but really the best way to improve in this area is to solve many tactic puzzles.  I'll show a few puzzles, if you don't want to solve it, after clicking it just click the "solution" button down at the bottom.

In the first puzzle is a classic mating attack, it's tricky if you haven't seen it before but experienced players will spot the pattern right away.  Notice how effective the bishops are at strapping the king in so to speak.  In the second white sacrifices a piece to draw the enemy king in to a checkmate (the enemy king has no choice :).  The third begins with a move that is not a check, but black has no defense.

In addition to Reinfeld's classic on checkmating your opponent, the book called (rather simply) "CHESS: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games" contains literally thousands of checkmating possibilities in it, which begin with "Mate in 1" and progress up to "Mate in 3". Also, this book contains a good number of short complete games in which the tactical fireworks occur on a certain square, such as f7 (or f2), g7 (or g2), etc. This can help you get used to seeing the attacking patterns that are most often associated with a checkmate within the context of an actual game, and many of the examples are from Master play.

Thank you. That helps a lot!

I have categorized kinds of checkmates so far into two categories. One uses two rooks or a rook and a queen in similar fashion as seen below (simplified).

The other category of checkmate would be a reinforced queen as seen in the diagrams below (simplified).

The question I ask know is which method do you think is better?

Well, I don't know any other way to answer this besides being blunt. Unless I have misunderstood what is meant by 'better' in your question, the answer is...

Neither method is better - it's checkmate and you win!

If 'better' is intended to mean 'more fun to play' or 'more aesthetically pleasing', then that is a question you must answer for yourself.

If 'better' means 'easier to achieve', then I would say it is usually dependent upon the specifics of a given position.

In the chess sense, however, there is no difference between one checkmate and another. They both end the game and score a full point for the winning side.

If your goal is to win games you don't usually have a luxury of choice. If you are lucky enough and there exists chekmating possibility you have to find it be it one of the above types or something else. For example if you are playing this particular position with white

the only plausible chekmate you can aim for is of the type shown below

For me the better mate is the one with most figures on board. And maybe when you see it 3-4 moves ahead (and your opponent sees it, but can't do anything about it >:)). Here's my latest mate. See what happens when you neglect your light figures and take out the queen so fast.

To answer the question of what I meant by which is better, I meant which was easier to obtain in less moves.

I see. Not surprisingly, the answer again is, 'it depends."

In the above position, White forces mate:

1. Rh8+ Kxh8, 2. Qh1+ Kg8, 3. Qh7#

However, changing the position, even slightly, can make all the difference.

Here the Black pawn is nowhere close to promoting. It has been replaced by a defensive pawn on h6 which keeps White out.

1. Rxh6? is plain silly. Not only does Black have 1...gxh6, but even better is 1...Rxe1 which also wins.

So you go from forced mate to no mate by changing a pawn. Sorry if this isn't the best example, but I've had the most success by focusing on the practical. If you find a mating line during a game, you play it - as long as you are SURE it wins. Spending extra time trying to find a faster way isn't useful, and can sometimes be disastrous.