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The good advice - plus my conclusion - that it takes 4 Thai Chess Queens to checkmate the Thai Chess King is based on practical and realistic considerations: That is an advice that is focused to a player who wants to play real matches of Thai Chess against real adversaries - and who wants to win those matches.
Background: true - if you let calculate the moves by a computer it is possible to checkmate the 'naked' King of Siam by an enemy King plus 3 Queens only. But that possibility is just theory: it has nothing to do with real matches on the board. If you are playing a real match - and if you are unwise enough to capture the whole enemy army except the opposite King - then a special rule of Thai Chess is going to get effective: YOU HAVE TO START COUNTING the legal moves to checkmate the naked king - and that is LESS than 50 moves.

• The number of legal moves is dependant on a specific and rather obscure system of counting your own pieces and the enemy pieces plus applying a system of evaluation of the type of pieces that are left on the board plus the number of moves that are legal under that very consideration and under that very evaluation of the very kind of pieces that are left on the board.
• That difficult system is explained - to name one example - at . Frankly spoken I do not understand that system - and as the great chess journalist Tim Krabbé/The Netherlands has reported on his experiences with the Cambodian Ouk Chatrang (that happens to be quasi identical to Mak Rook)that system seems to be difficult to understand, so that very system is inviting to (most friendly, of course!) manipulations by Thai adversaries during matches against 'farang', the foreigners. That is the real background for my most practical advice: do not be too confident that you have, whilst playing a match of Mak Rook, enough time/moves left for check-mating your opponent's King by the help of King & 3 Queens - by some 20,30 moves or so; maybe you have not applied that specific Thai system of counting the legal number of moves that are left for legally check-mating well enough ... and your opponent will declare the match to be 'drawn', to your great dismay and frustration (and, if you do not believe that, please read again that funny reportage by Tim Krabbé on his chess trip to Cambodia - that has happened to him). So, if you have the chance to achieve that, I am sticking to my good advice: If you have the chance it is better to get 4 Queens instead of three; and please be careful enough not to eat all the pieces of your adversary if you are not forced to do so. What is Queen no. 4 good for during the finale of a match? That Queen can flexibly be used for two purposes - on the one hand, to close the drag net that is encircling the enemy King (and how that can be executed that is demonstrated by our game of demonstration);on the other hand, to avoid Zugzwang on your part and to use Zugzwang as a weapon - that is forcing your opponent into that position that will lead him into doom (again that match of demonstration that has been published in the foregoing is demonstrating how that way of operating will work).

True: in the end you will watch - as in the sample game just discussed in the foregoing is demonstrated - that three Queens are enough for the composition of the final position of checkmate; but the long way to reach that position that has been much easier to go because of the Black Army having been able to mobilize 4 Queens instead of a threesome. So, again, the good advice of our headliner is a good advice for a practitioner who wants to test Mak Rook in real play: 4 Queens are a very convenient way to checkmate the enemy King of Mak Rook in due time - if you have 'only' 3 Queens then there is the strong risk that you will not reach checkmate before your opponent will trumpet 'drawn!'.
Dr. René Gralla, Hamburg/Germany