Intermediate Smothered Mate

Building up on the first course that showed the basics of smothered mate in bughouse, this course will show a few mate patterns that end up in a smothered mate. Knowing those patterns will help you to both successfully finish an attack and defend yourself against your opponents' threats.

Smothered mate with bishop and rook

Like we saw in the previous course, we can attract the rook to g1 by dropping a rook to this square while it is protected by a bishop:

As you can see, it's very similar to the smothered mate we saw in the previous course, but this time, the dropped rook is protected by a bishop.

If you already have a knight on g4 or e4, you don't need one in your hand:

So always be on the lookout when you have a knight on one of these squares and the f2 square is empty.

Smothered mate with 2 knights and rook

Another pattern involve 2 knights:

We first drop a knight on e2 to push the king to the corner. Then, we attract the rook to g1 to finally mate the opponent by taking f2.

The e2 square is important when the king castled to the king-side: different tactics involve this square so make sure you protect it to defend against them and look for tactics if your opponent's e2 square is not protected and they castled to the king-side.

Smothered mate with 2 knights and queen

Another pattern also uses 2 knights, but it requires a queen:

If the pawn takes the knight, it is mate immediately:

The knight on f4 is important to protect the queen on g2. And this is why a queen is necessary for this pattern: a rook would not be able to checkmate if the knight is captured.

This pattern also works when the knight is on h4, instead of f4:

Smothered mate with bishop, knight and rook/queen

If there's a bishop pointing towards a castled king, it can be very dangerous. A knight drop on h3 can lead to a checkmate:

Taking the knight doesn't work either:

If you had a rook in your hand instead of a queen, you would need to drop it on h1 in order to checkmate:

That was it for this tour of smothered mates. The next course will be about different mate patterns.