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Of the main checkmate patterns which are the most frequent (in games that ended with a checkmate)? Based on chess literature the Back-rank mate is arguably the most common, I would expect the Queen mate would be up there as well as promoting a pawn to a queen for a defining endgame material advantage is a logical conclusion to most endgames. After having learnt the main patterns and completed a lot of mate puzzles empirically, the Dovetail (Cozio's) mate and its variants is one of the most frequent if not the second most frequent. I however cannot back this up scientifically. Are there any statistics out there one can access on this topic? Is there a way to analyse e.g. the Lichess database to determine the relative frequency of each type of main checkmate pattern? Has this been done already? In researching online I have come across some info on statistics based on the piece that made the last move. Very interesting, however my interest extends to the actual checkmate patterns and not just the last piece that moved.

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    The problem is that the most frequent checkmate patterns never actually happen - the player who is about to be checkmated resigned.
    – Alexander Woo
    Commented Jan 23 at 0:51
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    The problem two (even if you count an imminent mate followed by a resign) would be: which group? If "all", shepherds mate. A GM sample would be a different thing.
    – Hauke Reddmann
    Commented Jan 23 at 16:20
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    For clarity my question is restricted to games that ended in checkmate.
    – chesshomem
    Commented Jan 24 at 5:33
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    It's going to take some time but I can run it across a 20m+ database. Estimate it might take a week or two to automate the classifications though
    – Dheebs
    Commented Jan 25 at 11:47
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    Also THX to Dheebs, would find it interesting too. Please specify the ELO level in the database if you are ready. (Even better, split database by ELO :-)
    – Hauke Reddmann
    Commented Jan 26 at 8:06

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