Lolli’s Mate Pattern: How To Checkmate With Queen and Pawn in Chess

Lolli’s Mate, named after Giambattista Lolli, is a checkmate pattern delivered with a pawn and Queen after your opponent castles.

A pawn is pushed to the 6th rank with your opponents King on the 8th rank and your Queen get’s to the h6-Square. Then the Queen delivers checkmate moving to the g7 square. Using the Chess tactic known as a sacrifice is common on the H-file in order to open it up for the Queen to get in position to deliver this mate.

Examples

Example #1

Blindfold Chess is hard enough, but imagine being able to do a Blindfold simultaneous Chess match, and win effortlessly. Almost unbelievable how Grandmasters are able to do it.

This example is from a Blindfold Chess simul all the way back in 1871. Blackburne (the player whom the Blackburnes Mate is named after) delivers the beautiful mate pattern to win the game.

Example #1

Watch the Super Grandmaster use this mating pattern in a speed run.

Practice Puzzles

Here are two practice puzzles for Lolli’s Mate you can try right here.

Puzzle #1

It’s White’s to move and threatens mate in two. Where would you move first? And would Black be able to prevent checkmate? And are you, White, safe from a Back Rank mate from Black’s Queen?

Puzzle #2

This puzzle demonstrated a common tactic used to position the Queen on the H-File so Qh6 is free for the Queen to move to and then deliver checkmate, Lolli style.

I hope this guide on the Lolli’s Mate helped you. If you liked this post, you may want to learn all of the other Checkmate patterns such as the Back-Rank Mate and Greco’s Mate.