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Openings › Mate in one › January 2026 › Exercise 3 of 4

Mate in one: White to move (exercise m1-11071ae301)

White to move and mate in one. In this position White can give checkmate with one move. The position comes from a rated Lichess game of January 2026.

Last move: 14…d5 (Black's pawn from d6 to d5); its two squares are marked on the board.

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Pick a piece, then its square. Keyboard: Tab to the board, arrow keys to move, Enter or Space to pick.

Hint 1: which piece?

Look for a queen move.

Hint 2: which square?

The mating move goes to h7.

Show the solution

One move gives checkmate:

  1. Qh7# (d3 to h7). After this move, the white queen on h7 gives check to the black king on g8, and Black has no legal move: checkmate. The black king on g8 has no safe square to go to (f7, f8, g7, h7 and h8). Its own pawn on f7, rook on f8 and pawn on g7 stand in the way. h8 is covered by the white queen on h7. The white queen on h7 cannot be captured: the king may not take it, as the white bishop on c2 guards h7. The white queen on h7 stands right next to the king, so nothing can be put in between.

Our code tried every legal move of White in this position: this is the only move that gives checkmate.

The position as text

Where this exercise comes from

The position comes from a rated game in our sample of the Lichess open database (CC0 1.0), from the monthly file of January 2026. From a game that began with the Englund Gambit. In that game White gave checkmate with the next move. We show no player names and no link to the game. Our code tried every legal move of the position and lists every move that gives checkmate; the list, the hints and the explanations are checked again each time the site is built. How the exercises are chosen: Mate in one and How it works.