How to Check Mate with a King & Rook in a Chess Game

Video Transcript

"So, the final one of these mates that I want to show you is the king and rook mate, and this is a slightly more complicated mate, although the underlying principle of driving the king back to the edge of the board is the same. So in this example, white to move would come here; immediately insuring the king can't get back towards the center. Let's say the king moves to here. The white king would then move, let us say to here. Black would then attempt to stay as close to the center as possible; would move to here, and what would happen at this point is that basically the black the white rook would move to here. Now, notice if the white rook is there, it's already cutting off some of the moves of the black king. He cannot come to either of these two squares; he would have to come here. Now, white would then move to here. Now, again notice that black doesn't have a great deal of choice, he can't move here, and he can't move here. He's got to move, so he would probably have to move here. Rook now takes up that extra bit of room. Most likely, the black king would now come out; trying to attack the rook, which would immediately be defended by the white king. Black would then have to give way. The king would then move towards the opposition king. At this point, you would probably get this move, and what would happen here is that the white king then would get the opposition, the facing on the black king. Notice the black king cannot move here; he cannot take the rook of course, and he cannot move in that direction. He has only one move in effect, which is there. And what happens now is that the white rook moves to here, taking away more space from the black king; still protected by his own king. Can't go here, can't go here; he's got to go to the edge. So let's say that he goes to this edge, and what happens now is that the white rook moves out of the way. The black king has to move. Let's say that he comes to this square here. The white king now closes in on him, and it's blacks move. He has only one move remaining you'll notice, and that is to here and now white goes in and completes the checkmate. The black king cannot escape."