Chess Legal's Mate

 Just because you get to take somebody's queen doesn't mean you win the game. Expecially when you run into someone who knows how to play the Legal's Mate. If you already know how to play it, you still have to be careful to think about playing it in any given position. Make sure that it works. Don't just memorize White's moves and ignore the position at hand. In this video watch the Legal's Mate when it works and when it doesn't work. Then read the moves as they are listed. Once you do all that, you will never be Legal's Mated and you will never play the Legal's Mate incorrectly and just end up down a piece. Remember to think about each move, never just memorize a series of moves and play them without thinking. Memorizing is ok but not if it replaces thinking.

 The Legal's mate only works if Black either plays along, for example as in the video shown above, captures the queen (like White wanted her to do) or if there is no piece that can capture the knight when it plays the final checkmating move, Nd5. If there is a knight on f6, then it will simply capture the knight when you try to say checkmate. If the bishop is on e7 as well, then the king will have another excape square on f8. Refer back to these exceptions again after you learn the Legal's Mate in the next section. If you really want to get good at chess you have to combine thinking with memorizing patterns like the Legal's Mate.

You probably won't remember this one until it happens to you. It comes out of the Philidor. 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Nc6 Bg4 4. Bc4 a6 5. Nxe5!!  Someone, probably a kid, will offer you their queen. If you happen to know that this kid is in the top scholastic players in the country you might think twice before you take it, but I didn't. I took it. And then when I got checkmated two moves later I vaguely remembered seeing the puzzle once or twice a long time ago either in a tactics book, a book like "How To Beat Your Dad At Chess," or even the after school chess program where I worked as a coach. It was in a lesson plan, one of five basic diagrams on a handout that showed traps in the opening to watch out for, sort of like quicksand covered with leaves. "Neat," I remembered thinking. I remembered thinking that as I watched the checkmate unfold after taking the queen of a kid in the top ten or twenty scholastic kids in the country. Then I thought, "Why did I think he was giving me his queen." And then I realized how useless it was to look at a diagram, when it was real life experiences like these that made you never fall for the Legal's Mate again. Still, go ahead and look at the diagram. Look at the puzzle above and see if you can figure out why as Black you shouldn't take his queen.