However, the relative strength of a knight vs bishop depends on the position on the board. However, the knight can’t move diagonally.Īlthough a knight and bishop both move completely differently, they are worth the same amount of points. The knight is the strangest piece on the board because they move in a unique L-shaped pattern and can jump over pieces. You can learn more about rooks in this article.

Moreover, a rook in the corner or on the edge of the board control a lot more squares than a bishop.įor these two reasons, a rook is normally a lot stronger (5 points) than a bishop (3 points). So while rooks can reach any square on an empty chessboard within two moves, a bishop can only move to half the squares no matter how many moves you make. However, the problem with moving linearly is that you can only move to other squares of the same color. And in the center of the board, they both control roughly the same number of squares. One of them moves diagonally, while the other moves linearly. The diagram below shows how a rook can move.Īt first glance, you might think this means that rooks and bishops are roughly similar in strength. Rooks can only move linearly and are not allowed to move diagonally. If you want to know more about how a pawn moves and all the unique movement rules, you can read this article. But unfortunately, they can never capture (diagonally) backwards.Īlso keep in mind that a pawn that reaches the opposite side can promote into a queen or bishop that moves diagonally. Pawns can even capture diagonally on the first move if one of your opponent’s pieces is close enough. So I believe pawns belong on this list as well. Meaning that while pawns can’t move diagonally, they can capture diagonally. However, a pawn can also capture diagonally forward one square. One of the first things you learn as a beginner is that pawns can only move forwards. If you want to learn more about the king’s movement, you can read this article.

However, the fact that a king can move both diagonally and linearly often makes the king more valuable than a bishop in the endgame. While a bishop can move from a1 to h8 in just one move, a king will need 7 moves to walk across the board. This makes the king flexible but also extremely slow. However, the king can only move one square at a time. Similar to the queen, a king can move diagonally, horizontally, and vertically. If you want to know more about how the queen moves, you can read this article. And unlike a bishop, a queen isn’t limited to just the light squares or dark squares. This makes the queen the strongest and most valuable piece on the board. The queen’s movement is basically that of the bishop and rook combined. However, a queen can also move linearly in either horizontal and vertical directions. The queen is another piece that can move diagonally for any number of unoccupied squares, similar to a bishop. If you want to know more about the way bishops move, you can read this article. So they can control the entire board together. That’s why you start each game with one light-squared and one dark-squared bishop. For example, a light-squared bishop can only move to other light squares. Since a bishop can only move diagonally, a bishop can only move to other squares of the same color. This is because the bishop is only allowed to move diagonally.īishops can move as many squares diagonally as they want, as long as all the squares along the way are unoccupied. BishopĪmong all the pieces that can move diagonally, the bishop comes to mind first. Let’s see how these pieces move diagonally and which chess pieces can’t move diagonally. Every chess piece moves and captures differently.īut the bishop, queen, king, and pawn can all move or capture diagonally in one way or another.

Chess piece moves diagnolly