Knight or Bishop?
Is A Knight More Valuable Than A Bishop?
This is a complicated problem. It’s way more complicated than assigning a value to the king. Many grandmasters refuse to discuss the issue outside of the upper echelons of the game because they feel that unless you have your head firmly grounded in deep chess theory that the discussion would go over your head.
Fortunately, we don’t agree, though it’s not the easiest thing to follow.
About The Knight
Knights move in an L-shape. That is 2 squares in either direction along the vertical or horizontal and then 1 square in either direction along the horizontal or the vertical.
Depending on where it sits on the board a knight may move to up to 8 different squares or as few spaces as two.
It has the power to jump over other pieces and is the only piece (except for the special move of castling which can happen only once per game) to have this power.
You can move the knight to any square on the board though it must always end a move on a square of the opposite color from where it started.
About The Bishop
Bishops, on the other hand, are free to roam the diagonal and they can move as many squares diagonally as they can reach.
In the center of the board, they can move to up to 13 squares, in the corner just 7. They can’t jump like a knight though and that may mean that they struggle on a corded board.
They can only move from a square of one color to a square of the same color and thus, a bishop may only appear on 32 squares of the board, the other 32 are off-limits.
Which is Better Bishop or Knight?
It depends on circumstances but in general:
If you have two bishops on the board, they are worth more than 2 knights or a knight plus a bishop – some players argue that this combination once the midgame is reached might be worth as much as 9 points rather than 6
If there are no queens left on the board – the power of the bishops goes up, there’s no exact numerical power increase for this but if you have a bishop and a rook going into the endgame they work better than a knight and a rook will.
In an open position – that is one where the board is relatively empty and pieces can move freely then a bishop is worth more than a knight, its larger potential move set makes it more powerful
In a closed position – that is a more defensive game where each player is blocking up the middle of the board then a knight is a more powerful piece than a bishop, the ability to jump over your opponent’s lines is very handy in these situations
If you can get a grandmaster to open up to you about the value of these pieces they will acknowledge that they raise and lower the value of the bishops and knights depending on where they are in the game and the overall shape of that game.
This makes sense. Knights and bishops may be, theoretically, be of the same value when a game begins but, in reality, as the game progresses their values are highly dependent on the circumstances on the board.
As a chess player, early in your playing career, these differences won’t make much difference to you because you won’t know enough to exploit these differences but as you get better, it will become a more important distinction and it’s likely that you too will adopt a sliding scale of value for your chess pieces.
Conclusion
Knight vs Bishop: which chess piece is more valuable? If you need a “rule of thumb” then in most positions on the board, there’s a good chance that the bishop is going to be worth slightly more than a knight. This is even more likely if there are two bishops present when their relative value in an open endgame is close to 9 rather than 6 but it’s important to note that this is not a universal rule.
In closed positions, the knights can be much more powerful than bishops. The ability to pierce the opponent’s lines and get behind things using the “jump” functionality of knights is priceless in many games like this and here the knight comes into their own and is worth more than a bishop. As your game improves, you will get better at judging when your knights matter more than your bishops and vice-versa.
