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 [1]. --Camembert

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

Ex: The knight (♘♞) 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)

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.