The Checkmate Patterns Manual
🏆 Third place for Course of the Year 2020! 🥉🏆
NEW for 2020: “The best course on Chessable” just got even better!
CraftyRaf’s smash-hit Checkmate Patterns – Chessable’s flagship checkmates course – has been expanded and undergone a complete revamp.Not only does it now come with:
➕ an optional 10 hours of video instruction from IM John Bartholomew;
➕ everything you need to know about all the motifs explained;
➕ 130 MORE puzzles taking the total to 1,000.
But the puzzles have also been rearranged better: 100 of the most difficult based on user fail stats have been moved to the Final Test chapter.
If that’s not enough, The Checkmate Patterns Manual also now starts with a Basic Test chapter designed to figure out what you already know so you can start on what you don’t.
A complete checkmate patterns compendium
Anastasia, Greco, Hook, Arabian, Vukovic, Smothered, Suffocation, Corner, Morphy, Pillsbury, Lolli, Opera, Damiano, Max Lange, Dovetail, Swallow’s Tail, David & Goliath, Boden, Balestra and the list goes on and on and on.These are all motifs you must know if you want to score those quick and decisive wins.
You will find all these essential mating patterns explained in full in this course. Test yourself on every one. Review them. Master them. Because these are the killer combos that will win you games!
What does the video add?
CraftyRaf was originally inspired to create this encyclopedia of endings after seeing IM John Bartholomew’s 25 Basic Checkmates free Chessable trainer. CraftyRaf wanted to build a complete and comprehensive upgrade and his course became a runaway best-seller. Its reviews have been incredible.Now IM Bartholomew has added his weight to the manual to make it the ultimate compendium of winning motifs and useful for all levels. IM Bartholomew gives a detailed explanation of each individual pattern and – crucially – how you arrive at it.
The Chessable co-founder provides context looking into the history of each pattern AND runs through hundreds of game examples to help you see how these checkmate patterns arise in actual games and shares the stories to help you embed them in your long-term memory.
As you can see this course is intended as a one-stop-shop for checkmate patterns – everything you need under one hood.
Beta-testers and Chessable staff were initially blown away by how complete and detailed this course is – and now we’ve worked hard to make it even better. The time and care CraftyRaf has put into this is clear to see and that is why it gets the Geert gold medal.
Course stats
For:
both pieces
Recommended for:
Casual players Intermediate players Advanced players
Language:
🇬🇧 English
Instruction:
20,684 words
Paid video:
9 hours and 55 minutes
Free video:
1 hour and 16 minutes
Trainable variations:
913
Informational variations:
87
Avg. line depth:
30.00
Released on:
Jul 24, 2019
Support level:
High
Section:
🎓 Titled player
The Checkmate Patterns Manual
has 4.8 out of 5 stars, based on 573 user ratings.
Variation Details
2 x 1. Introduction (1.00 avg depth)
4 x 2. Indices (1.00 avg depth)
35 x 3. Basic Test (28.57 avg depth)
10 x 4. Anastasia’s mate (24.70 avg depth)
20 x 5. Greco’s mate (22.00 avg depth)
10 x 6. Arabian mate (32.70 avg depth)
10 x 7. Hook mate (34.20 avg depth)
10 x 8. Vuković’s mate (46.00 avg depth)
10 x 9. Smothered mate (17.20 avg depth)
16 x 10. Suffocation mate (19.38 avg depth)
5 x 11. Corner mate (25.60 avg depth)
8 x 12. Morphy’s mate (29.63 avg depth)
8 x 13. Pillsbury’s mate (19.25 avg depth)
16 x 14. Opera mate / Mayet’s mate (16.81 avg depth)
10 x 15. Lolli’s mate (26.50 avg depth)
10 x 16. Damiano’s mate (25.60 avg depth)
8 x 17. Max Lange’s mate (26.50 avg depth)
24 x 18. Damiano’s bishop mate (27.38 avg depth)
17 x 19. Dovetail mate / Cozio’s mate (29.53 avg depth)
12 x 20. Swallow’s tail mate / Guéridon mate (34.75 avg depth)
24 x 21. David & Goliath mate / Pawn mate (25.63 avg depth)
10 x 22. Boden’s mate (16.10 avg depth)
8 x 23. Balestra mate (44.00 avg depth)
10 x 24. Double knights mate (22.60 avg depth)
12 x 25. Double bishops mate (23.00 avg depth)
7 x 26. Blackburne’s mate (16.43 avg depth)
5 x 27. Blind swine mate (rooks on the 7th rank) (28.60 avg depth)
8 x 28. Epaulette mate (29.88 avg depth)
18 x 29. Back rank mate (25.67 avg depth)
20 x 30. Lawnmower mate (30.70 avg depth)
10 x 31. Triangle mate (31.50 avg depth)
10 x 32. Kill box mate (33.40 avg depth)
20 x 33. Mate in the opening (6.15 avg depth)
211 x 34. Puzzles: Warm-up (30.17 avg depth)
282 x 35. Puzzles: Exercises (35.01 avg depth)
100 x 36. Final Test (33.84 avg depth)
Badges Available
Claimed from this course.
Thousand Strong
Claimed from this course.
Pattern Recognition
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The Matrix
Reviews
Chessable
Play Magnus Group
I was a beta tester who had the pleasure to go through many parts of this course. I got intrigued by the simplicity and the completeness of the course that I went on to study more than 70% (72% to be exact) of the course!😉😋
This course is a real GEM on Checkmates!😍
Just look at the Variation Details sidebar and quiz yourself with the Checkmates you know of? I, an FM, didn’t know around 10 of them! (I learned 10 new checkmates!😍😁💪🙌👍)
My favourite Checkmate is the ‘David & Goliath Checkmate’! It is like a pawn checkmate – pawn (underdog) checkmates the King (King!!) 😍
The course has an ‘Indice’ in which all the Mating Patterns/Puzzles have been neatly linked! Even the players’ names mentioned in the course (from A-Z) have been linked to the corresponding puzzle! 😍😎👌
There is also a timeline which says ‘Till what year was the player active?’ – For example ; if it is Blackburne’s Mate, the course says the following :
1841-1924 : Joseph Henry Blackburne – Blackburne’s mate
This is done for all the players who contributed to the naming of that specific mate! 😍👏
All right, let’s get down to CHECKMATES!
Before the beginning of puzzles in each chapter, there is an Informational which talks about the Mating Pattern and the corresponding position shows the Mate! This is done for all Mates/Chapters! Most of the times when there are different versions of the same mate, Raf clearly talks about this nuance in a different informational in the respective chapter hence the naming of the informational lines in the most of the chapters as, for example, Boden’s Mate 1, Boden’s Mate 2, etc. and the corresponding trainables present this type of mate mentioned.😊👌👏🙌
Above all of this, the course comes with 2 new badges!! 😍😍
All this for only 10$, available only on Chessable! 😊😃
After Raf finished creating all the puzzles, he could’ve just pushed that Publish button but he wanted the course to be top-top-notch so he went on to create ‘Indices!’ and stuff and he even proof-read the course multiple times👏. This shows his dedication as an author and how much respect he has for his students! Great job Raf!! 😃💪👍😍😊👏👏👌
Add this book to your Chessable Library and let us all Checkmate (our opponents) together with Raf!💪
I am something around 2000 Fide player who has not played a competitive game in over 4 years and picked up chess again during the lockdown.I love this course. I was reluctant to buy it, as I felt like checkmate patterns are not something I would be struggling with. However, I decided to give it a shot, expecting it to return it after I try it and see how good at checkmates I am. Little did I know…
After scoring full marks from the basic test, everything was going according to my plans. Then I started looking at the theory behind all those checkmates and I found quite a few exercises I got wrong (some of them multiple times), even though I knew what kind of pattern I should be looking for.
Therefore, I can say I will definitely be keeping this course. And I would advise everyone bellow 2k to give it a shot. You might as well return it within 30 days. But I find it more likely that you will learn a thing or two about your checkmating abilities that you might not be too happy to admit 🙂
PROS: – a lot of material covered – exercises for all levels – my new favorite chess “fast-food” – using chessable format well
CONS: -not really a course problem, but a bit of a chessable “problem” (which I don’t think can be fixed easily). When cycling through the theoretical exercises while reviewing, you get all the same patterns grouped together, making it a bit less challenging. Would be nice to be able to randomize the order.