I have mated Fritz with two Bishops, but I took longer than the 17 moves you suggested. I think I could do that every time now. The problem I have is a knight and a bishop. I can mate maybe 2 out of 3 or 4 tries. If I can get the king on the side of the board with my pieces close to the right position, I can run his king to the corner and mate, but getting it set up is my main problem. I will look to see if you have a video on that.

I'm planning to make a video on mating with a Bishop and Knight vs. King. Although it is instructive, the need to mate with bishop and knight is so rare as to almost never arise in tournament games (professional chess players may only need to use this mate once or twice in their chess careers).

Then why make a video of mating with two bishops? K+B+N vs. K is certainly not more rare than K+B+B vs. K, and mating with two bishops is certainly alot more trivial than mating with knight and bishop

That's probably true. Mating with two bishops is not more rare, but it's also much easier to explain, which is why I made the instructional video. Explaining how to mate with bishop and knight in an instructional video would be pretty difficult, and while I'm planning to do so, I figured my time would be better spent working on other videos and annotating games for people.

Actually I think K+B+B vs K is more rare, since there's only one combination of pieces left that leads to K+B+B vs. K (just the king and bishops you started with and the king he started with), but for K+B+N vs. K, you have four combinations (dark-squared/light-squared bishop plus b1/g1 knight). Although it's not something you can calculate easily like that, it's not complete nonsense either

Anyway I understand that mating with two bishops is easier to explain, but it's also easier, and it will help fewer people than when you explain mating with bishop and knight.

How about learning this not for the fact that you need to know how to mate with two bishops or with a bishop and a knight, but for the fact that learning this will teach you in the most rudimentary way how the pieces cooperate with one another in every way and the fact that though they are different colors they can defend each other (well from a king who can't put himself in check, but it's still valid) and control huge portions of the board? Learning it in an endgame makes it all that much more valuable as you are not distracted by the other nuances of the game and learn the "bare bones" approach that can then be used in your middle game tactics and strategies and such.

I agree completely. I think these endgames are instructive because they give one a deeper understanding of how the pieces work.

I still think my signature says it all.

yeah the 2b checkmate is a nice thing to learn i think the BK checkmate is an important thing to learn as well.

my new program chess school 2, has alot of interesting positions for 2b checkmate some that josh didn't show in his video. and ones where u can put the king in stalemate and then checkmate if he has a pawn or another piece out of position.

hey Josh u r the best! please reply to this i feel honoured!
hello to indian friends i am aravind from kochi.

after you've mastered the 2 bishop checkmate, try this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-XduhPcmhg

it is sort of mate with one and a half bishops

Thanks for posting the video, I was going to watch it if I needed further help with this mate and the N-B mate, but I managed to figure it out thanks to Zibbit and another YouTuber. Fritz also helps when you're stuck on a move.

It feels good to finally get this down.
Now to embarrass some noobs on FICS! (or get embarrassed drawing a won endgame).

It's always good to review the elementary mating nets in the endgame.

As elementary as this mate is supposed to be, to my everlasting regret, I allowed a draw (as the stronger side) in a recent blitz game. I supposedly "mastered" this ending years ago and thought it would be a snap however with 60 seconds left on my clock I got flustered made a carelss move that allowed him to slip out and I eventually ended up stalemating him. So it showed me that learning something and pulling that knowledge out of the hat under pressure are two different things. BTW, some comments in the thread have indicated how rare this is- this is, at least, the second time I've had this endgame- thankfully, I won the first time around.