Knight (chess)

The knight (♘,♞) is a piece in the game of chess and is represented by a horse's head and neck. Both players start with two knights, which are located between the rooks and bishops.[1]

White knight
Black knight


History

The knight, along with the king and the rook, has the oldest defined movement of any chess piece, its movement being unchanged since the invention of chaturanga in India around the 6th century.[2]

Similar pieces are found in almost all games of the chess family. The ma of xiangqi and janggi are slightly more restricted; conceptually, the piece is considered to pass through the adjacent orthogonal square, which must be unoccupied, rather than "jumping". Another related piece is the keima of shogi, which moves like a knight but may only move two squares forward followed by one square sideways, restricting its movement to two possible squares.

Names

Colloquially it is sometimes referred to as a "horse", which is also the translation of the piece's name in several languages. Some languages refer to it as the "jumper", reflecting the knight's ability to move over pieces in its way: Polish skoczek, Danish/Norwegian springer, Swedish springare, German Springer, Luxembourgish Sprénger, Slovene skakač. In Sicilian it is called sceccu, a slang term for a donkey, derived from the Arabic sheikh, who during the Islamic period rode from village to village on donkeys collecting taxes.[3]

Movement

Compared to other chess pieces, the knight's movement is unique: it may move two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically (with both forming the shape of an L). While moving, the knight can jump over pieces to reach its destination.[4][5][6] Knights capture in the same way, replacing the enemy piece on the square and removing it from the board. Knights and pawns are the only pieces that can be moved in the initial position.[7]

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The starting position for a game of chess (with dots representing the knights' possible moves).
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Knights on different squares of a chessboard (with dots representing the knights' possible moves).

Strength
Further information: Chess piece relative value

Knights and bishops, collectively referred to as minor pieces, are considered approximately equal in strength.[8] Bishops utilize a longer range, but can only move to squares of one color. The knight's value increases in closed positions since it can jump over blockades.[9] They are stronger when supported by other pieces (such as pawns) to create outposts and become more powerful when they advance (but must remain active since an inactive knight is useless, regardless of its position).[10]

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A knight and bishop on a chessboard (with dots representing their possible moves). The knight can move to white and black squares, but the bishop can't leave the color it starts on.

Properties
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A knight occupying a hole (d5) in the enemy pawn structure

Enemy pawns are very effective at harassing knights because a pawn attacking a knight is not itself attacked by the knight. For this reason, a knight is most effective when placed in a weakness in the opponent's pawn structure, i.e. a square which cannot be attacked by enemy pawns. In the diagram, White's knight on d5 is very powerful – more powerful than Black's bishop on g7.

Whereas two bishops cover each other's weaknesses, two knights tend not to cooperate with each other as efficiently. As such, a pair of bishops is usually considered better than a pair of knights (Flear 2007:135). World Champion José Raúl Capablanca considered that a queen and a knight is usually a better combination than a queen and a bishop. However, Glenn Flear found no game of Capablanca's that supported his statement; statistics do not support the statement, either (Flear 2007:135). In an endgame without other pieces or pawns, two knights generally have a better chance against a queen than two bishops or a bishop and a knight (see Fortress (chess)).

From Mednis
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White to move cannot win. White wins if Black is to move.

Compared to a bishop, a knight is often not as good in an endgame. A knight can only exert control over one part of the board at a time and often takes multiple moves to reposition to a new location, which often makes it less suitable in endgames with pawns on both sides of the board. However, this limitation is less important in endgames with pawns on only one side of the board. Knights are superior to bishops in an endgame if all the pawns are on one side of the board. Furthermore, knights have the advantage of being able to control squares of either color, unlike a lone bishop. Nonetheless, a disadvantage of the knight (compared to the other pieces) is that by itself it cannot lose a move to put the opponent in zugzwang (see triangulation and tempo), while a bishop can. In this position, if the knight is on a white square and it is White's turn to move, White cannot win. Similarly, if the knight was on a black square and it was Black's turn to move, White cannot win. In the other two cases, White would win. If instead of the knight, White had a bishop on either color of square, White would win with either side to move (Mednis 1993:7–8).

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Knight trapped by an enemy bishop; knight trapped by a king

At the end of the game, if one side has only a king and a knight while the other side has only a king, the game is a draw since a checkmate is impossible. When a bare king faces a king and two knights, checkmate can occur only if the opponent commits a blunder by moving his king to a square where it may be checkmated on the next move. Otherwise, a checkmate can never be forced. However checkmate can be forced with a bishop and knight, or with two bishops, even though the bishop and knight are in general about equal in value. Paradoxically, checkmate with two knights sometimes can be forced if the weaker side has a single extra pawn, but this is a curiosity of little practical value (see two knights endgame). Pawnless endings are a rarity, and if the stronger side has even a single pawn, an extra knight should give them an easy win. A bishop can trap (although it cannot then capture) a knight on the rim (diagram), especially in the endgame.

Notation

In algebraic notation, the usual modern way of recording chess games, the letter N stands for the knight (K is reserved for the king); in descriptive chess notation, Kt is sometimes used instead, mainly in older literature. In chess problems and endgame studies, the letter S, standing for the German name for the piece, Springer, is often used (and in some variants of fairy chess N is used for the popular fairy chess piece, the nightrider).

Knight variations

Even among sets of the standard Staunton pattern, the style of the pieces varies. The knights vary considerably. Here are some examples.

Unicode
Main article: Chess symbols in Unicode

Unicode defines two codepoints for knight:

♘ U+2658 White Chess Knight (HTML ♘)

♞ U+265E Black Chess Knight (HTML ♞)

See also

References
  1. "What Are the Rules of Chess? - A Step-By-Step Guide to Learning the Chess Rules". iChess.net. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
  2. Piecelopedia - Knight, chessvariants.com
  3. Agricola, Sebastian (Summer 2013–14). "Did you know? Sceccu" (PDF). The Sicilian Association of Australia Newsletter. No. 13.CS1 maint: date format (link)
  4. Because of this, the move can also be described in other ways, such as one square diagonally and one square orthogonally "outward" (not ending adjacent to its starting square), or one square orthogonally followed by one square diagonally outward. The latter describes the move of the horse in Xiangqi, which cannot jump.
  5. The FIDE Laws of Chess use a different but equivalent definition where the knight moves to one of the eight nearest squares that are not on its starting rank, file, or diagonal.
  6. "The Knight in Chess". MasterClass. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  7. "The Knight in Chess". MasterClass. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  8. Lawrence, Al (2016). Chess and the Art of War. New York, USA: Chartwell Books. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-7858-3281-2. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  9. Silman, Jeremy (1998). The Complete Book of Chess Strategy (1st ed.). Los Angeles, USA: Siles Press. pp. 215–219. ISBN 978-1-890085-01-8. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  10. "The Knight in Chess". MasterClass. Retrieved 13 June 2020.

Other Sources
  • Barden, Leonard (1980), Play better Chess with Leonard Barden, Octopus Books Limited, pp. 10, 11, ISBN 0-7064-0967-1
  • Brace, Edward R. (1977), An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess, Hamlyn Publishing Group, p. 155, ISBN 1-55521-394-4
  • Flear, Glenn (2007), Practical Endgame Play: beyond the basics, Everyman Chess, ISBN 978-1-85744-555-8
  • Hooper, David; Whyld, Kenneth (1996) [First pub. 1992], "knight", The Oxford Companion to Chess (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, pp. 203–04, ISBN 0-19-280049-3
  • Mednis, Edmar (1993), Practical Knight Endings, Chess Enterprises, ISBN 0-945470-35-5
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