Scholar's mate Scholar's mate In chess, Scholar's Mate is the checkmate achieved by the following moves, or similar: The same mating pattern may be reached by various move orders. For example, White might play 2.Qh5, or Black might play 2...Bc5. In all variations, the basic idea is the same: the queen and bishop combine in a simple mating attack on f7 (or f2 if Black is performing the mate). Scholar's Mate is sometimes referred to as the "Four-Move Checkmate", although there are other ways to checkmate in four moves. Unlike Fool's Mate, which rarely occurs at any level, games ending in Scholar's
Losing Chess most widely played (main variant) is described in "Popular Chess Variants" by D. B. Pritchard. The rules are the same as those for standard chess, except for the following special rules: A player wins by losing all their pieces, or being stalemated. Apart from move repetition, draw by agreement, and the fifty-move rule, the game is also drawn when a win is impossible (for example, when the only pieces remaining are ). Because of the forced capture rule, Losing Chess games often involve long sequences of captures by one player. This means that a minor mistake can doom a game.