Is Queen + Knight really stronger than Queen + Bishop?
Are you Team Knight (and Queen), or Team Bishop (and Queen)?
We are traditionally taught - at least, I was - that while the Rook and Bishop typically coordinate better than the Rook and Knight, the Queen and Knight typically coordinate better than the Queen and Bishop.
Why might that be the case? Well, the argument is that the knight moves very differently to the queen (which moves like a combined rook and bishop). Therefore, the knight harmonises very well with the queen in attacking the enemy king, and can easily shift from attacking one colour complex to another.
However, when I searched my databases for examples to support this notion, I struggled to find particularly convincing examples, that demonstrated the innate strength of the queen+knight, over the queen+bishop.
Whenever the queen+knight won, it wasn't because of the inherent strength of these pieces, but rather, because the side with the knight had some other advantage - such as a material advantage, greater piece activity, a strong passed pawn, or the safer king.
The following game is a typical example (notes are by Krasenkow):
We can see how the queen+knight vs. queen+bishop wasn't a long-term advantage, but rather, White used the open Black king to transition to a winning endgame (which you may like to practice against the computer in your own time).
Likewise, when the queen+bishop won, it was because of these same types of advantages. Here is another example, where Black won because of White's much weaker king, more than anything else:
In many other cases, the reason the winner won the game is because they had the move, and could use it to take and keep the initiative.
In positions where these additional advantages (or imbalances, if you like to use Silman's method) didn't exist, the games mostly ended in draws, unless one side made a serious mistake later.
When researching this topic, I noticed that GM Larry Kaufman (of Komodo fame) had come to the conclusion (based on Komodo) that there was no inherent advantage to having a queen+knight vs. queen+bishop. It ultimately depends on other factors in the position.
It was a long time since I read John Watson's books on chess strategy, but if I remember correctly, he also brought up this question. He considered whether the Q+N's very slight plus score over the Q+B in practice was because of strong players being generally more willing to enter such positions, especially when they had the advantage to start with?
I will share a couple more examples, and then you can make up your own mind as to whether the Q+N is better than Q+B, or equivalent (or, it depends on the position).
How are you going to apply these lessons in your games and training?
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