How to Checkmate with Queen and King: Avoid Stalemate

Checkmate with Queen and King is one of the most important basics of chess endgame that you need to learn.

Today, I will show you how to get a quick Checkmate with Queen and King vs. King and how to avoid stalemate (draw).

First, let’s begin with the basics:

Read also: How to Checkmate with Rook and King

How to move the Queen in chess?

The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. You can move it to any number of squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.

You can’t move the Queen if your king is in check, and you can’t defend it by the Queen:

So, the Queen is the most important piece after the King, and you can use it to take your opponent Bishop, Knight, Pawn, Queen, and Rook.

How to move the King in chess?

The king moves like the queen but by only one square:

You can use your King to take your opponent’s pieces, especially in the endgame:

Checkmate with a Queen and the King

To do a checkmate with a Queen and the King, we need this pattern that is going to repeat all over:

In this position, you can checkmate the King in many ways:

The first one is just putting your Queen in front of your opponent’s King. By doing that, that’s checkmate. 

The King cannot capture your Queen because it’s protected by the King, and your opponent king also cannot go anywhere because our Queen is controlling all of those squares:

The other way to do it is by simply going to the back rank (for example, Qe8) check, and then the king cannot go down because of your king and can’t go left or right because of your Queen.

There are other ways to do a checkmate with the Queen and King vs. King, like in this position, where we can move our Queen to g7.

You can notice that the Black King can’t go anywhere and can’t take our Queen because our King protects her.

Some way here, in this position, we can move the Queen to g7, and it’s a checkmate:

Set up a position to Checkmate with a Queen and the King

The first thing you need to do is to push your opponent King to the edge of the board with your Queen by creating a barrier that restricts the opponent’s King’s movement:

After that, you must continue pushing the king and cut off any potential escape routes for the opponent’s king, until you reach this position:

Notice that the opponent King has just one square to go.

After that, you bring your king to g6 and checkmate your opponent with the move Queen to g7 or Queen to e8.

Here is a live endgame to Queen and King vs King:

Common mistakes to avoid

If you are overconfident, you can blunder and get a stalemate or draw by pushing the king so hard until he can’t move, like this example:

Notice that the king is not on check and can’t move, so it’s a draw.

Don’t neglect the safety of your Queen while focusing on delivering checkmate because the King can take the Queen if she is not protected:

Checkmate with one Queen for Black

Whether you are playing with white or black pieces, it is the same. You have to push the king into the corner and then Checkmate him with the Queen.

Remember to push the king to the edge of the board and be careful not to get a draw.

Read also: How to Checkmate with Knight and Bishop

Queen endgame Practice Exercises

Find the checkmate in one (Black to move):

Solution:

Find the checkmate in one (White to move):

Solution:

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)