Have you ever found yourself dominating a game, leading in pieces, and yet struggling to put your opponent into checkmate? Have you ever chased a king around the board, frustrated that you could not find that all important checkmate position? Most chess players will struggle with completing the checkmate, especially early on in their chess playing. Being able to checkmate is essential and knowing some of the different checkmates is needed in order to be a competitive chess player.
Even if your opponent is outnumbered by pieces, they may try to elude you in order to get a draw. This is a very smart move on the part of your opponent. There are many different checkmates that you can use to end the game. Placing a guarded queen next to the king does one of the easiest checkmates, or at least one of the most effective checkmates. If the king has nowhere to escape to, then you have successfully placed your opponent into checkmate.
Another very common checkmate is to use two rooks, or a rook and a queen. Either way it is the same concept. Use your two rooks to dominate files so that the opponent's king is slowly forced over to one side of the board. Simply continue to move your rooks so that the king cannot move forward from the files and you will have a checkmate.
There are many more checkmate methods that can be used and you should study and learn those checkmates. Experienced players spend a great deal of time learning the various checkmates and it shows in their games by their wins. The more checkmates that you know, the better off you will be and the easier it will be for you to win games.