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Samuel Reshevsky fell for a mate in 9 as White while playing in Israel, presumably as part of a simultaneous exhibition. Irving Chernev cites it in his book, Wonders and Curiosities of Chess, among other opening blunders by GMs. Since I don't have the reference, I won't add it to the article. Does anyone have it on a database? Shalom ^Hello 19:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's in the Chessbase Mega Database: Reshevsky-Z. Margolits, Haifa simul, 1958. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 c5 5.Nge2 d5 6.Bd2 Qa5 7.a3 Nc6 8.axb4 Nxb4 9.Rxa5 Nd3# I don't think we want to put every smothered mate ever into the article though, do we? --Camembert 13:56, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have the book Wonders and Curiosities of Chess if it is needed. Bubba73 (talk), 02:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Aparantly a smothered mate is considered only by a knight (the article says it and The Oxford Companion to Chess says so too). This excludes positions such as this one, right? Bubba73 (talk), 02:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right. The point about a smothered mate is that the mated player's king cannot move because all squares in its field are blocked by friendly units. That's not the case with this bishop mate: the king cannot move to g7 because the white bishop controls that square, not because it is blocked by a black unit. And clearly, if a king is surrounded by its own pieces, then only a piece which is able to leap over them can give mate; in the orthodox game, that can only be a knight. --Camembert (talk) 01:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pillsbury once won a game a piece down where he swindled his opponent with a combination that ended with a mate like that in the diagram. I agree that it is not a smothered mate, and that a knight is the only standard chess piece that can administer a smothered mate. Krakatoa (talk) 06:36, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article included a game Morphy - McConnell, date unknown, which went 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. Bc4 Bg7 5. d3 h6 6. O-O Nf6 7. c3 b5 8. Bxb5 c6 9. Bc4 d5 10. exd5 cxd5 11. Qe2+ Be6 12. Bb3 O-O 13. d4 Ne4 14. Bc2 f5 15. Nbd2 Nc6 16. c4 Bxd4+ 17. Nxd4 Nxd4 18. Qd3 Qb6 19. Kh1 Nxc2 20. Qxc2 Nf2+ 21.Kg1 Nh3+ 22. Kh1 Qg1+ 23. Rxg1 Nf2# 0-1 This is the classic form of the mate (Philidor's Legacy) which we describe right at the start of the article, but I guess the person who added it thought it worthwhile including this second example because it is remarkable that a player zs strong as Morphy fell for it. However, this game appears in the Chessbase Mega Database 2004 not as Morphy - McConnell, but as Mac Connel - Morphy (New Orleans, 1849). In other words, Morphy didn't fall for the mate at all; he executed it. I do not think, therefore, that it is noteworthy or interesting enough to include it in the article.

Of course, it may be that the Chessbase database is wrong (it wouldn't be the only error in there), but I'd really like to know of a reliable source if the version with Morphy losing were to be added back to the article. --Camembert (talk) 01:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Macon Shibut's book Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory (2nd edition 2004) claims on page 3 to include "every available Morphy game, collected together in an English language volume for the first time." The index, on page 355, lists four games Morphy played against "McConnell". Morphy won all of them, including the last (1866) game at knight odds. No "Mac Connel" is listed. None of the four McConnell games even resembles the game given above. Only one of them was a King's Gambit, and that game diverged with 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 (the Kieseritzky Gambit) h5? (a now-obsolete line that was known as "The Long Whip") 6.Bc4 Rh7. The index to Philip W. Sergeant's Morphy's Games of Chess (1957) also lists no such game. Absent an authoritative source for this game, I think you were right to delete it. Krakatoa (talk) 06:32, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, should the move Nh6+ (Knight move which uncovers attack by Queen and itself gives check) be notated as: Nh6++ FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is double check, but chess literature usually does not make the distinction. It is optional - it wouldn't hurt to put it in, since this is for a general audience. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:50, 8 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'm liking this, optional, but wouldn't hurt putting it in since we're for a general audience. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Quale: do you have a reference for this? I haven't seen that usage

Below are some cases where the term "smother mate" is used—sometimes as a noun, and sometimes as a verb. I realize that these sites contain user-generated content, but they show popular use of the phrase.

On Chess Sites:

• Chess.com: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
• Lichess: 1, 2
• chess.stackexchange.com: 1

On other social media:

• Facebook: 1, 2
• Instagram: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
• TikTok: 1, 2, 3, 4
• Twitch: 1, 2
• YouTube: 1, 2, 3 (Hikaru!), 4, 5, 6, 7

Dotyoyo (talk) 00:24, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are any of those WP:RS? They seem like mistakes and incorrect usage to me. "Some people made a mistake on the Internet in places where there was no editor" isn't necessarily a reason to put that mistake in an encyclopedia article. Quale (talk) 05:15, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate name returned to lead, with multiple reliable sources. Dotyoyo (talk) 11:42, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's wrong and simply bad grammar. There's a reason that sources like Oxford Companion to Chess, Encyclopedia of Chess, Dictionary of Modern Chess, An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess, and The Encyclopedia of Chess, don't support this. English requires an adjective or adverb in "smothered mate" and "smother" is a verb. It would be the same as writing "chocolate-cover cherry". In the US, the well-known restaurant Waffle House offers hash brown options "scattered, covered and smothered". Ordering them "scatter", "cover", or "smother" would be very odd. Quale (talk) 15:58, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"It's wrong and simply bad grammar."

"Waffle House offers hash brown options"

How could you use the phrase "hash brown"?! Don't you realize that "hash" is a verb and "brown" is an adjective?! That's bad grammar! You can't verb an adjective! /s

Let's avoid outdated pedantry, and not ignore actual usage supported by reliable sources. In response to your objective, I've modified the first sentence, describing "smother mate" as informal usage.

Dotyoyo (talk) 19:59, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was curious re your listed "Hikaru!" example on Youtube, and Hikaru doesn't say "smother" he says "smothered", albeit a little "under his breath". So no Dotyoyo, you listened to that wrong, you're hearing what apparently you want to hear. p.s. "hash browns" is a noun.--IHTS (talk) 20:03, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(1) I was referring to the title of @GMHikaru's reel. (2) I'm familiar with hash browns. Perhaps you missed the trailing "/s". Dotyoyo (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You appear to want to assign greater credibility to the anonymous Chess.com uploader who wrote that title, than to Hikaru. (Poor decision.) --IHTS (talk) 21:29, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In another of your examples, the 4th-listed Youtube example, a Benjamin Finegold vid w/ title "It's Always A Good Day to Smother Mate", the phrase "smother mate" is a verb. And 4.00 minutes into that vid, Finegold clearly says "smothered mate". So another misconstrued or hallucinated example from you. --IHTS (talk) 20:31, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I said in my first post on this page, "sometimes as a noun, and sometimes as a verb". I never said that the phrase "smothered mate" isn't also used. Can we perhaps drop the hostility? Dotyoyo (talk) 20:47, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In your 5th-listed Youtube example, with Anna Cramling, beginning at 11:32, both players say "smothered", used as adjective, Cramling says it twice. So if you wanna compare the credibility of the vid uploader who titled the vid, versus Cramling, I'd go w/ Cramling. --IHTS (talk) 20:44, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Title: Anna Cramling Goes For Smother Mate [...]. I was merely showing a case in which the phrase "smother mate" was used. Can we stick to substantive points about article content, or just drop it? Dotyoyo (talk) 20:50, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did. (Did you notice suggestion to compare credibility w/ what Cramling said, versus what the vid uploader wrote for title?!) --IHTS (talk) 21:03, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In your 6th-listed Youtube example, titled "Sneaky Rook Sac Leads To Sick Smother Mate!", the mate executed in the vid is not even a smothered mate, it's a simple mate. Apparently the vid uploader doesn't even know what a smothered mate is. (And that's your example for a ref??) --IHTS (talk) 20:58, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your 2nd-listed and 7th-listed Youtube examples are duplicates of the same vid. And at 15 secs into that 16-second vid, although the speaker's voice is obscured by the music, I'd say he says "smothered mate", not "smother mate". --IHTS (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I largely agree with Quale/IHTS; the excessive citations are distracting too. A potential compromise is to move the note about the alternate name from the intro to a section, but I'm fine with getting rid of it too. Dayshade (talk) 17:25, 26 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To make the citations less distracting, I've merged them into one. Dotyoyo (talk) 05:29, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]