TheChessWorld begins to publish articles written by WGM Natalia Pogonina as a part of TheChessWorld.com & Pogonina.com cooperation. Natalia Pogonina is three-times European champion (U16, twice U18), bronze prize winner at the World Championship (U18) and European Women Championship, winner of the gold medal at the 1st International Mind Sports Games, co-winner of the 2008 Student World Championship, and #1 at multiple prestigious international tournaments. Her current elo is over 2500.

Continuing last week's story about the '09 Russian Superfinal, I would like to share with you my game from round 3 against the experienced 2-time vice-World Champion IM Alisa Galliamova, who also happens to be the ex-wife of GM Vassilii Ivanchuk.  We have played before twice: I won one game and drew one.

It always surprised me how many chess players are unfamiliar with chess terminology.  I was recently talking with a player whose rating will hit the master’s level very shortly. We went over the game which was just played between two of us and I mentioned the word “Skewer” while analyzing.  He obviously did not know the term and looked puzzled; I gladly explained that a Skewer is just a reversed pin, with a more valuable piece up front.  We laughed.

I’ve decided to compose these commonly used chess terms and phrases and to form into a single writing in order to let chess players all around speak the same “chess language”.

As we all know, the ultimate goal of chess is to deliver a checkmate.  Fortunately not all checkmates in chess are as complicated as the one discussed here. Today we’ll focus on 13 most common checkmates in chess. You should always look to setup one while playing a game and also be aware of these structures in order to avoid nasty surprises prepared by your opponents.

By looking at this positions you will learn basic checkmating patterns and will train your ming to  create and find similar position in your own games.

White to move  in each position.