In modern parlance, the term checkmate is a metaphor for an irrefutable and strategic victory.
![four move checkmate four move checkmate](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q2n2RKuo3Mw/maxresdefault.jpg)
So the king is in mate when he is ambushed, at a loss, helpless, defeated, or abandoned to his fate. "Māt" (مات) is a Persian adjective for "at a loss", "helpless", or "defeated". Players would announce "Shāh" when the king was in check. "Shāh" (شاه) is the Persian word for the monarch. It means "remained" in the sense of "abandoned" and the formal translation is "surprised", in the military sense of "ambushed". It comes from a Persian verb mandan (ماندن), meaning "to remain", which is cognate with the Latin word maneō and the Greek menō (μενω, which means "I remain"). Moghadam traced the etymology of the word mate. However, in the Pashto language (an Iranian language), the word māt (مات) still exists, meaning "destroyed, broken". Others maintain that it means "the King is dead", as chess reached Europe via the Islamic world, and Arabic māta (مَاتَ) means "died" or "is dead". The term checkmate is, according to the Barnhart Etymological Dictionary, an alteration of the Persian phrase "shāh māt" (شاه مات) which means, literally, "the King is helpless". ExamplesĪ checkmate may occur in as few as two moves with all of the pieces still on the board (as in Fool's mate, in the opening phase of the game), in a middlegame position (as in the 1956 game called the Game of the Century between Donald Byrne and Bobby Fischer), or after many moves with as few as three pieces in an endgame position. A checkmating move is recorded in algebraic notation using the hash symbol (#) - for example, 34.Qh8#. If a player is not in check but has no legal move, then it is stalemate, and the game immediately ends in a draw. In master and serious amateur play, most players resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated, and it is considered bad etiquette to continue playing in a completely hopeless position. In chess the king is never actually captured - the game ends as soon as the king is checkmated.
![four move checkmate four move checkmate](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ttw98Il4UjE/maxres2.jpg)
Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is a game position in chess (and in other board games of the chaturanga family) in which a player's king is in check (threatened with capture) and there is no way to remove the threat.