A knight and rook coordinate to checkmate the king trapped on the edge of the board.

Anastasia's Mate is a checkmate pattern in which a knight and rook work together to deliver checkmate, with the enemy king trapped on the h-file (or a-file) by its own pawn. The pattern takes its name from the novel Anastasia und das Schachspiel (Anastasia and the Game of Chess) by Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse (1803), in which the checkmate appears.

Key Elements

• The defending king is trapped on the edge file (a or h) by a pawn—typically its own pawn on g7.
  
• A knight covers the king's escape squares.
  
• A rook delivers the final check along the file, which cannot be blocked, captured, or escaped.