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Openings › Mate in one › December 2025 › Exercise 1 of 4

Mate in one: White to move (exercise m1-6893ce3e50)

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 December 2025.

Last move: 15…Ng6 (Black's knight from e7 to g6); 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 bishop move.

Hint 2: which square?

The mating move goes to g6.

Show the solution

One move gives checkmate:

  1. Bxg6# (d3 to g6). After this move, the white bishop on g6 gives check to the black king on h7, and Black has no legal move: checkmate. The black king on h7 has no safe square to go to (g6, g7, g8, h6 and h8). Its own pawn on g7, pawn on h6 and rook on h8 stand in the way. g8 is covered by the white queen on f7. The white bishop on g6 cannot be captured: the king may not take it, as the white queen on f7 guards g6. The white bishop on g6 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 December 2025. From a game that began with the Horwitz Defense. 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.