Checkmate patterns
The back rank mate
A rook or queen arrives on the eighth rank and the king, with its own three pawns in front of it, has nowhere to go. It is the most common mate in chess and the most common way a winning position is thrown away, because it is one move deep and everybody is looking somewhere else.
How to spot it
Two questions, both worth asking every move. Can my king move if it is checked on the back rank? And is theirs any better off? Everything else follows from counting who defends that rank, and the tactic is nearly always a deflection of the one piece that does.
The positions
Easiest first. Every one is from a real game, and the rating under each board is what it costs the players who have tried it on lichess.
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1. Black to play Play it out →Answer
25...Rc1+ 26.Ne1 Rxe1#
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2. Black to play Play it out →Answer
25...Qxf2+ 26.Kh1 Qf1+ 27.Rxf1 Rxf1#
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3. Black to play Play it out →Answer
24...Qxf1+ 25.Rxf1 Rxf1#
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4. White to play Play it out →Answer
25.Qxe8+ Rxe8 26.Rxe8#
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5. White to play Play it out →Answer
32.Qxa8+ Rxa8 33.Rxa8+ Qb8 34.Rxb8#
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6. Black to play Play it out →Answer
17...Qxf1+ 18.Kxf1 Bd3+ 19.Kg1 Re1#
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7. White to play Play it out →Answer
14.Qd6+ Kg8 15.Re8#
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8. Black to play Play it out →Answer
22...Qh2+ 23.Kf1 Qh1+ 24.Nxh1 Rxh1#
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9. Black to play Play it out →Answer
26...Rb1+ 27.Bd1 Rxd1+ 28.Rf1 Be3+ 29.Kh1 Rxf1#
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10. White to play Play it out →Answer
28.Qxf7+ Rxf7 29.Rxd8+ Rf8 30.Bxe6+ Kh8 31.Rxf8#
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11. White to play Play it out →Answer
18.Qf7+ Kh8 19.Bf8 Rxf8 20.Qxf8+ Rxf8 21.Rxf8#
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12. Black to play Play it out →Answer
23...Qf4+ 24.Kb1 Rf1+ 25.Rxf1 Qxf1#
Reading about a pattern is the easy half. Motify finds the positions where you missed one, by running your own lichess and Chess.com games through Stockfish, and puts each of them behind two or three puzzles on the same idea so you meet it having just found it three times. See how Motify works.
Positions from the lichess puzzle database, released under CC0.