Where do kings get checkmated?
Where the losing king stood in 1.6 million checkmates on Lichess, by the piece that gave mate. White’s kings are mostly mated at the bottom, Black’s at the top. Two in three mates are by the queen, and six in ten catch the king on its own back rank, a third of them in the corner where a castled king lives (g1 or h1, g8 or h8). Pawns are the exception: three in four pawn mates find a king that has walked out to its third rank or beyond.
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Data: the Lichess open database, August 2026 (CC0): the first 6,362,144 rated games of the month, all ratings, 1,600,000 ending in checkmate. The mating piece is the one that made the mating move (a promotion counts as the new piece). Each board is its own share: darker squares are where more of that piece’s mates happen, on a square-root colour scale so the quieter squares still show. Played as puzzles in Daily Shade.