Damiano's Mate
An early textbook checkmate pattern in which a queen, supported by a pawn, delivers mate to a king trapped on the back rank in front of its own pieces.
Damiano's Mate is one of the oldest recorded mating patterns, named for the pattern's appearance in early printed chess literature, and it is still used to teach basic mating ideas involving queen and pawn cooperation.
Etymology
This mate is named after the Portuguese author of one of the earliest printed chess books. Wikipedia's checkmate-pattern article describes the position, a pawn confining the king while the queen delivers mate, and states that it was first published by Pedro Damiano in 1512. Wikipedia's biography gives his Portuguese name as Pedro Damiao, notes that Damiano is the Italian form much like the Latin Damianus, dates him 1480 to 1544, identifies him as a pharmacist and native of Odemira, and records that his book Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de li partiti appeared in Rome in 1512 and ran to eight sixteenth-century editions. A separate mate, Damiano's bishop mate, is also named after him. One caution is documented in the pattern article: in Damiano's original publication he failed to place the white king on the board, making the position illegal and causing modern databases to reject it. A second caution comes from the biography, where the historian Jose Antonio Garzon is reported to claim that Damiano was a pseudonym and that the book was actually written by Francesc Vicent.
First documented: 1512 — Pedro Damiano, Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de li partiti (Rome, 1512)
Translations
Translations for this term haven't been added yet.