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from the Chess Guy
For the months of November and December, The Chess Guy will be offering articles to promote the upcoming Holiday Family Chess Tournament happening on January 5th at 9AM at Summit Academy Catholic School in Cottonwood. Below is the first article. Knights and Bishops It took me many years to really understand the subtle differences between knights and bishops in chess. It turns out to be quite simple but I have never heard it taught this way before. Even though both pieces get a value of 3 for their material value, their true value on the board changes as your game progresses. Knights can jump but have limited range. This makes them ideal in crowded boards where Bishops are blocked from doing their long-range sniper-bot tactics. Because Bishops cannot jump and only can reach half of the board squares, they are better if you have both of them and when there are fewer pieces on the board. To illustrate this, I devised a drill that two people can play to learn how to use their Knights and Bishops best. 1) Set up your kings and one white Bishop and one black Knight on their home king-side squares. 2) Choose how many pawns to play with and place them each on the second rank towards the center of the board. 3) The goal of the game is to get your Knight or Bishop across the board to a safe square or get a pawn across which can turn only into a white Bishop or a black Knight and must not be immediately taken to win. 4) If you trade the Knights and Bishops off, it’s a draw.  |
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