Chess Piece Duos, Which Pieces are Strongest Together?

One of the fundamental parts of chess is making your pieces work together. All pieces are stronger with a little bit of backup from another piece. Today, I will be showing you some of the strongest piece duos there are, and the next time you play, you can keep a look out for these possibilities.

Let's get started! The first piece duo is the double knight. When knights are both protecting each other, they are super strong. Just look at all of the moving possibilities when you have two knights in the center of your board!

Nothing can kill one of them without the other one killing it. This is an extremely helpful position to do when you have two knights in enemy territory, and they are in danger.

The next piece duo is the double rook. Like knights, rooks are also extremely powerful when put right next to each other. First off, the rook is a very good piece because of its unlimited movement and ability to claim entire columns of the chess board. However, when you put two rooks aligned together, they become a very big force to be reckoned with.

When you make a double rook on the H column, you pretty much claim it, and no enemy piece can land on it. This is useful for protecting certain lanes, and it can also be used to guard enemy pieces from going into the first row (or the 8th row if you are black). Once you develop your bishops, knights, and queen, if you castle your king, nothing can come into your base without being taken down.

You can interchange one rook in the double rook for a queen, which would make the duo even more powerful. If you put the queen in front, you make your queen more vulnerable but you are able to reach more places and your queen is better developed. If you put your queen in the back, your queen is safer, but you don't have as much room to move around with it.

A couple more things with the double rook: you can add a queen to make it a double rook queen battering ram of doom. Also, it is very easy to want to move your rook out of the double rook formation. This completely depends on your position, but I would recommend waiting until both rooks are safe. Also, your rook would be on its own, without any protection, so it is more risky.

Another uncommon duo I would recommend is the bishop-pawn.

The bishop-pawn is a more uncommon duo that protects both the bishop and the pawn. As long as you hold that position, your pieces (probably) won't be killed. It isn't very good for mobility, and it doesn't protect that many squares, but at least neither the bishop or pawn should be killed.

The final position has a few variants: pawns. Since there are eight pawns, you can make a lot of different structures with them.

There are three main pawn positions, the diagonal, the horizontal, and the passed pawns.

Firstly, the diagonal pawns are the best position to be in. They are used in the formation of massive pawn-walls that can completely limit the opponent's move choices. The only weakness they have is at the bottom, and when they are facing bishops and queens on the opposite color squares. They are excellent for defending against rooks, other pawns, queens, and kings. They are especially useful against bishops of the same color. Be careful though, as you can lock yourself in with massive pawn-walls, too.

Same color bishops can be annoying though. How can you promote a queen in this situation? Remember, the weakness is at the bottom of the chain.

Horizontal pawns can be useful in certain situations. Because they can protect the 4 squares in front of them, they can be exceptional at blocking kings and other pawns. However, fast moving pieces like queens or rooks can easily penetrate them. Use this technique in endgames where there are no more fast moving pieces. They also have a weakness on their backside. They only have a shield on their front, where as their back is wide open for attack. 

Finally, there are passed pawns. These pawns are not in a very good position. They can be attacked from in front, on the back, and often on the sides. When you have passed pawns, that means you took a piece while in the horizontal pawn formation. While this itself is good, it opens up holes for the enemy to attack inside. That lane will probably not have a pawn for the rest of the game. Passed pawns are good for preventing rooks and queens from going down certain lanes. The 4 squares that they protect are to their sides, so queens and rooks won't try to go past them. Try not to make a passed pawn formation with the pawns in front of your castled king. That would make your king vulnerable.

Pawn formation strengths:

Pawn formation weaknesses:

Thanks for reading through this! I know it was a bit longer than some of my other ones. If you enjoyed, please comment, because would love to read through what you think. I hope you can start to see some of these strategies work out in some of you own games!

-SuperSamuel8