♟ Chess Opening Scores

Openings › Mate in one › March 2026 › Exercise 2 of 4

Mate in one: White to move (exercise m1-de6d4adffa)

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 March 2026.

Last move: 26…Rf6 (Black's rook from f8 to f6); 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 f6.

Show the solution

One move gives checkmate:

  1. Bxf6# (c3 to f6). After this move, the white bishop on f6 gives check to the black king on h8, and Black has no legal move: checkmate. The black king on h8 has no safe square to go to (g7, g8 and h7). g7 is covered by the white rook on e7 and the white bishop on f6. g8 is covered by the white queen on d5. h7 is covered by the white rook on e7. No black piece can capture the white bishop on f6. No black piece can move to g7 to block the check.

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 March 2026. 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.