Fool’s Mate A Great Learning Tools for Chess Beginners – Game#43

There is a two move checkmate in chess. It’s called the fool’s mate. The fool’s mate normally only happen to a player once while he learning to play. I personally see it as a very good learning tool for beginners learning to play chess. The Fool’s Mate perfectly demonstrates the game of chess is about trapping your opponent King (checkmate). 

Let’s say you are going to teach a five year old how to play chess? You probably won’t have a problem teaching that child the concept of taking (capturing) all his opponent pieces to win.  As a matter of fact you shouldn’t mention it all. The desire to capture your opponent pieces is nature.  

First thing first for a new or young player, it might be recommended to tell that player a little bit about the game being an ancient game played by Kings and all of his subjects many years ago. Of course you have to correctly name all the individual pieces, display and practice all the pieces moves. This also includes the "en passant" move.  

Now once a player knows how to move, capture and attack their opponent pieces it’s a great time to direct that player into a "Fool's Mate" game. The fool’s mate best demonstrates trapping an opponent King for a check mate. Entrapping (checkmating) an opponent King with many pieces still on the board is a very important concept to understand in chess.  

The nature progression after demonstrating and explaining the “fool mate” is to direct the player into the "Scholar's Mate". The “scholar’s Mate” can be achieved in as little as four moves but there are many variations. Once a new chess player learns and understands these two checkmates, the sky is the limit on how far and fast they can go.