Morphy's Mate Chess Puzzles

About morphy's mate puzzles

Morphy's mate is named after Paul Morphy, the nineteenth-century American who played the most famous attacking chess of his era. The pattern uses a bishop and a rook against a king in the corner, with the bishop cutting the long diagonal while the rook delivers mate. It typically appears after a rook sacrifice that drags a defending pawn away. Practising it develops two things at once: the specific geometry of bishop-and-rook mating nets, and the broader attacking instinct of asking what a sacrifice would achieve before deciding it cannot be right.

How to train morphy's mate

Forced mates reward exhaustive checking. Look at every check first, even the ones that look absurd — a mating net usually starts with a move that gives up material or puts a piece where it can be captured.

Questions

How many morphy's mate puzzles are there?

Enough that you will not repeat them — this set is drawn from a library of over 1,000,000 puzzles taken from real games, graded from easy to hard.

What level is this suitable for?

Children from about age 5 upward, once they know how the pieces move, through to rated tournament players. Start on the easy set and move up when you are solving most of them at a glance.