“The smothered mate is a most beautiful kind of mate, produced by the knight. It is made possible by the inability of the opposing king to escape because he is completely surrounded by his own pieces.“
(Aaron Nimzowitch, 1925)
Smothered mate is one of the oldest checkmate patterns in chess, as shown in the diagram below. The reason for this is that while chess pieces and their movements have evolved over time, the knight and its role have remained unchanged. The first known modern chess book, written by Luis Ramírez Lucena in 1497, already discusses elements of this pattern, providing examples without explicitly using the term “smothered mate.” Pedro Damiano presented a chess problem containing a smothered mate in 1512. This position and the same problem have been repeated many times in chess literature. I have also included another famous and widely known position that ends in an ultimate smothered mate.
The smothered mate pattern
Greco’s problem (mate in 2)
Mate in 3 moves
For Greco’s problem, the solution is quite straightforward: 1. Qxh7 Qxh7 (there is no other way to escape) 2. Nf7#. For the Mate in 3 problem, there is a special move involving a discovered double check, and only that grants victory to White: 1. Nh6+ (double check, so the king must move) Kh8 2. Qg8!+ Rxg8 (the black king cannot capture it, and cannot escape from the check in any other way) 3. Nf7#.
It is quite common in tournament games as well. Smothered mates do not necessarily happen in the corner; they can also appear in openings, especially in gambits. The following game was played in 1937, and it is a widely known game. This does not mean that the exact game was not repeated move by move later, too.
Or another fine example is from a master level game.
Smothered mate, as you can see, often involves some sort of sacrifice. A sacrifice during the opening is usually referred to as a gambit. The player sacrifices material in exchange for initiative, time, or positional advantage. Wilhelm Steinitz discussed the following gambit in 1895. It is important to note that Black violates standard opening principles to set up a trap, and White falls into it by disregarding multiple opening principles as well.