Talk:Knight (chess)

Jeremy Silman, The Art of Planning, Chess Life, August 1990
I'm looking at the issue, it's The Art of Making Plans - Part III, page 36.

old talk
We must not be intolerant of popular usage. Please, "horse" is not an incorrect term. Many of my friends use it.


 * I believe that "horse" is not, in fact, a very popular usage. My understanding (and correct me if I am wrong) is that while beginners sometimes refer to a knight as a horse, the more familiar they become with chess, the more likely they are to refer to the piece as a knight.  I don't know what makes usage incorrect, but "knight" is very standard and "horse" is rather non-standard.  I suspect that even among non-chess players, most people call the piece a knight.  I don't see it as intoleratance on the part of Wikipedia if all of our articles use only the term knight: it is simply the clearest way of speaking.  --Fritzlein 07:48, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * PS: I do know some people who consistently refer to a knight as a horse, but they are native Chinese speakers who are literally translating the name of the corresponding piece in xiangqi.

For the record, the word "horse" does not appear in the official FIDE laws of chess. --Camembert

I suggest indicating that "horse" is a colloquial or informal term.

Ex: The knight (&#9816;&#9822;) is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight (armoured soldier) and often depicted as a horse's head. The piece is sometimes colloquially or informally referred to as a horse due to this resemblance.


 * From what I've read, in languages other than English, the chess piece is called a "horse" or a "rider of a horse". I don't have a reference to that.  Bubba73 (talk), 04:36, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed. The name is after that given to a similar piece in national varieties of chess.  e.g. the Horse in Xiangqi.  A-giau 19:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

No, any serious chess player refers to it as a knight. And just because it's called a horse in other languages doesn't make it correct in English. youngvalter 19:37, 2 July 2007

I think the use of the word horse instead of knight comes from a lot of casual players who learned to play chess as a child. I know I always called it a horse because I saw a horse. I always called a rook a castle because it was a castle in my eyes. Serious players do refer to it as a knight...just like serious players know how to to the "en passe" move that casual players aren't familiar with. I don't have a problem with someone saying horse (I say knight now). Add to the confusion that in Spanish the piece is called caballo which translates into horse. Yes, it translates into knight as well, but when you take Spanish in high school you learn horse, not knight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.173.119.3 (talk • contribs)


 * I think you mean en passant and even casual players should know that - it is one of the basic rules of chess. I read that the name of the piece in other languages is either a "horse" or a "rider of a horse".  In English it is the "knight".  Bubba73 (talk), 19:27, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I realize this is an ancient discussion, but I wanted to post proof that very knowledgeable players sometimes call the piece "horse". See for example the book Complete Book of Chess Strategy by IM Jeremy Silman. He calls it "horse" 14 times (vs >100 for "knight"). I believe he does that to make his prose more lively, as in "the horse heads for greener pastures" when describing a move. Anecdotally, I've also met tournament players who call it a horse. I'm pretty sure they know the official term is knight, but they don't care. --Itub (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
 * An affectionate term. (Like a professional violinist calling their instrument a "fiddle".) --IHTS (talk) 23:29, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Link here from Horse (disambiguation)
Either way is fine, but we're purging the Horse (disambiguation) page of all links that aren't simply called "(the) horse(s)", and our only sources can be these articles. The idea is to help people who call it that to find this article. Are there such people or not?

Even if this article simply mentions that people who call it "horse" are misspoken, we can include it on the Hourse disambiguation page and direct them here. If this article does not acknowledge that some people call it a "horse" in any way, we're not supposed to link here from there because disambiguation pages don't know anything except what's in the articles they link to; because they aren't otherwise cited.

So as this article doesn't acknowlege the word "horse" somehow, we must remove it from the horse disambiguation page. If at some point in the future this changes, please either re-add it to that disambiguation page or let me know and I'll do it. Thank you. Chrisrus (talk) 07:33, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Diagram of knight's move
I propose that we go back to showing the knight's move with the standard chess position template, rather than the GIF. Reasons (1) the trend throughout the chess articles has been to replace images with the chess template, (2) the red squares and the lines are distracting and add nothing, in my opinion. Bubba73 (talk),

Reverting to get those kings out of there
I dunno why there are pictures of kings on an article about knights, so I'm reverting it. If you have a problem, talk to me here. --Kevin (TALK) 01:47, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Knight Traversal
Who was it that demonstrated a set of moves by a single knight on the board, where the moves cover every square? KyuuA4 20:35, 16 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know who did it first, but see Knight's tour. Bubba73 (talk), 19:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Knight's movement pattern
The patterns mentioned in the text, 'Observing and even memorizing the patterns (diagonally 2-4-2-4-2-4, horizontally and vertically 3-2-3-2-3-2)...' are technically incorrect toward the ends of the sequences. The diagonal should be 2-4-2-4-4-4-(6) and the horizontal/vertical is 3-2-3-2-3-4-(5). The difference is rarely significant for several reasons, mainly including the fact that to work that far out requires starting on an edge or in a corner and having the freedom and a reason to march so far across the board, but I can conceive of instances where naively using the simpler pattern can get you into trouble (such as assuming that you can actually reach 5 or 6 squares away in only 2 moves!)

For exploring the full potential of the knight I've found it more convenient to center the knight's initial position on a 15 x 15 board and work out the numbers on that, as this gives the maximum range of the knight in all possible directions. Learning this overall pattern then allows you to mentally overlay it onto a chess board and truncate unneeded portions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.141.176 (talk) 19:06, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

In Estonian knight is called ratsu (steed). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.28.84.98 (talk) 12:29, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Knight move
Should we put how knight move according to FIDE Laws? to the next square not in the same row, column or diagonal. It's a bit confusing to people unfamiliar with chess but I think it's worth. OTAVIO1981 (talk) 15:03, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I would say add it, but don't let that be the main one, because with the FIDE description, you do have to think about what squares it is talking about. Asside: I once had a kid ask me "Can it move like a lower-case L?"  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)


 * We discussed how to describe the move of the knight a bit at Talk:Rules of chess/Archive 2. I can't speak for anybody else, but I think the general feeling was that at rules of chess we should use only two or at most three descriptions of the knight move, chosen to be easy to understand, rather than every description that has been used.  I think the situation here is a bit different.  Since the article is devoted only to the knight, a mention of all the descriptions of the move used by well-regarded sources might be appropriate here, even if this includes four or five or even six different definitions. Quale (talk) 06:57, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Glenn Flear remark is amusing
"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 and statistics do not support the statement either (Flear 2007:135)."

LOL. I have to chuckle here. Chess isn't just recorded games and statistics. And Glenn Flear is no Jose Capablanca. I'm a fairly strong player and I've been in a number of endgames where I'm glad I had the Queen and Knight. Often a Queen and Knight can work together to produce an unexpected checkmate or win of material whereas the Bishop simply duplicates the diagonal move of the Queen. In general, without other pieces, it is harder to work with a Queen and Bishop than Queen and Knight. Tpkatsa (talk) 12:54, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you may find GM Larry Kaufman's assessment based on nearly a million games between players of at least FM standard to be more convincing: "It was said by Jose Capablanca that queen plus knight are better than queen plus bishop, which I found to be true by only a trivial margin, and that rook plus bishop are better than rook plus knight, which was more clearly true but still by a small margin." Double sharp (talk) 12:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Major Edits on "Knight"
Hello! I'm starting to revise "Knight (chess)" to help improve its value on the quality scale (for WikiProject Chess)! Today, I revised the section regarding movements and added newer sources. If you have any suggestions or want to help, feel free to post here or on my talk page. Thanks! Puredication (talk) 03:08, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Merge "Strength" and "Properties" sections?
The "Strength" and "Properties" sections seem to cover the same material. The strength of a knight is the same as a bishop, but its properties determine this. What are your opinions? Puredication (talk) 16:17, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This merge seems logical to me, as there is a good deal of overlap or potential overlap between these topics. A couple of cautions:
 * It might be helpful to have sections and subsections of this article match, to some reasonable degree, those of Bishop (chess) and Rook (chess). If that means making the same changes to the other two that you made to this one, that's OK with me.
 * These are very old articles, which have a lot of history, though they may not have anyone actively editing them right now (other than yourself). So do not be offended if some other old-timer points out problems with changes you are making.  Bruce leverett (talk) 18:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I first plan on updating the already-existing content, but will definitely make sure it matches the other pieces (I plan on revising various chess articles, so I will probably visit those soon anyways). I'll work on merging the two sections together soon, and thanks for the warnings. Puredication (talk) 23:55, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Mathematics
The knight and its movement pattern are used as the bases of several mathematical concepts, such as the knight's tour. Is this worth mentioning in the article? ISaveNewspapers (talk) 19:49, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes. Cobblet (talk) 15:51, 11 June 2022 (UTC)