Chess by the numbers
What is the fastest checkmate in chess?
The Fool’s Mate: 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#. Black mates on the second move — after only four moves in total, the earliest a game of chess can end.
White’s two pawn moves open the diagonal from h4 to e1, and the queen checks the king along it. Nothing can block the check, capture the queen or let the king escape.
All eight two-move mates
The idea works with either pawn first and with either e-pawn move by Black, so there are exactly 8 checkmates after four moves (computed by this site):
- 1. f3 e6 2. g4 Qh4#
- 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#
- 1. f4 e6 2. g4 Qh4#
- 1. f4 e5 2. g4 Qh4#
- 1. g4 e6 2. f3 Qh4#
- 1. g4 e6 2. f4 Qh4#
- 1. g4 e5 2. f3 Qh4#
- 1. g4 e5 2. f4 Qh4#
How rare is it?
Those 8 games are among the 197,281 possible games of the first four moves — about one in 25,000. One move later there are 347 mates among 4,865,609 games, and the fastest mate for White comes on its third move, for example 1. e4 g5 2. d4 f6 3. Qh5#.
The Scholar’s Mate
The mate most beginners actually fall for takes four moves: White’s queen and bishop both aim at f7 and the queen takes there with mate. It is easy to stop; see the Scholar’s Mate.
The fastest stalemate
The quickest known stalemate takes ten moves; it was found by Sam Loyd: 1. e3 a5 2. Qh5 Ra6 3. Qxa5 h5 4. h4 Rah6 5. Qxc7 f6 6. Qxd7+ Kf7 7. Qxb7 Qd3 8. Qxb8 Qh7 9. Qxc8 Kg6 10. Qe6 — Black still has a queen, two rooks and a bishop, but no legal move (checked by this site).