The three types of mates considered so far all have had some features in common: a combination of diagonal pressure against the king’s position, usually supplied by a bishop, with vertical pressure provided by a rook or queen. These next mates use a similar logic but with the diagonal work done by pawns rather than bishops. In our earlier look at the Anderssen-Zukertort game we saw that a heavy piece on h8 can mate with support from a pawn on g7 as well as from a bishop farther back on the long diagonal. Lolli’s mates and Damiano’s mate are other ways of using advanced pawns to fill similar supportive roles.

The idea behind Lolli’s mate is to get a pawn onto f6; from there it controls g7, creating a number of nice possibilities. Since g7 is off limits to Black’s king, it may be stuck on the back rank despite the movement forward of its g-pawn; so a back rank mate may be possible. The idea of interest to us here, however, is that the pawn on f6 can do a bit of the same things we have seen done by a bishop on the long diagonal: if you can get a queen onto h6 and then onto g7, for example, you may be able to mate. Qg7# will do it for White in the adjacent diagram.