Details
Fool's Mate received its name because it can only occur if White plays extraordinarily weakly (i.e., foolishly). Even among rank beginners, the mate almost never occurs in practice.
The same basic mating pattern can also occur later in the game. For instance, there is a well-known trap in the Dutch Defence which occurred in the 1896 game Frank Melville Teed vs. Eugene Delmar:
1. d4 f5 2. Bg5 h6 3. Bf4 g5 4. Bg3 f4
- It seems that Black has won the bishop, but now comes ...
5. e3
- Threatening Qh5#, a basic Fool's Mate.
5... h5 6. Bd3?!
- 6.Be2 is probably better, but the move played sets a trap.
6... Rh6?
- Defending against Bg6#, but ...
7. Qxh5+!!
- White sacrifices his queen to draw the black rook away from its control of g6.
7... Rxh5 8. Bg6#
A similar mate can occur in From's Gambit: 1. f4 e5 2. g3 exf4 3. gxf4?? Qh4#
More generally, the term Fool's Mate is applied to all similar mates early in the game. For example, in 1. e4 g5 2. d4 f6 3. Qh5#, the basic Fool's Mate pattern is the same: a player advances his f- and g-pawns, which permit the enemy queen to mate along the unblocked diagonal. One such Fool's Mate is widely reported to have occurred in a possibly apocryphal 1959 game between Masefield and Trinka which lasted just three moves: 1. e4 g5 2. Nc3 f5 3. Qh5#
Even more generally, the term Fool's Mate is used in chess variants to mean the shortest possible mate, especially those which bear a resemblance to the orthodox chess Fool's Mate. For example, Fool's Mate in the variant Progressive chess is: 1. e4 2. f6 g5 3. Qh5#
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