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Openings › Mate in one › August 2026 › Exercise 5 of 5

Mate in one: White to move (exercise m1-c95fb9ad23)

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 August 2026.

Last move: 32…Qg4 (Black's queen from d7 to g4); 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 g4.

Show the solution

One move gives checkmate:

  1. Bxg4# (e2 to g4). After this move, the white bishop on g4 gives check to the black king on h5, and Black has no legal move: checkmate. The black king on h5 has no safe square to go to (g4, g5, g6, h4 and h6). Its own pawn on g6 and pawn on h4 stand in the way. g5 is covered by the white bishop on e3. h6 is covered by the white bishop on e3. The white bishop on g4 cannot be captured: the king may not take it, as the white rook on g1 guards g4. The white bishop on g4 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 August 2026. From a game that began with the French Defense: Normal Variation. 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.