Hardest piece to use effectively?

I just got to thinking about the different pieces in chess and which pieces are harder to command than others. I feel like there are some pieces that are trickier to use effectively than others, or pieces that beginning players might find easier to misuse more than often than others, independent of strength of the piece. Here were my musings:

1) Queen: With great power comes great responsibility. Because the queen is so potent, there is a lot of temptation to push the queen beyond her capabilities in many position. She can move in any direction, which allows her to get into nooks and crannies, but due to her value, she is very easily trapped. There is only one queen, so it can't work together like other pieces can.

2) Pawns: A pawn move is forever. Pawn formations generally dictate position strategy for a game, which can often be hard to read for beginning players. Pawns like to support each other, but there is always a weak pawn for the enemy to attack, and mismanaged pawn chains create holes for the enemy to exploit and lots of pawns to babysit. From opening to endgame, pawn moves never can be taken lightly.

3) Knights: "Psychopaths of the chessboard", their movement patterns are unlike any other piece. There are two of them, but they don't generally work well together like the bishop pair does. I feel like the knights often require a lot of upkeep and sometimes it's hard to identify where knights need to go to get to great positions. On the other hand, I find them very useful against beginners, who often don't understand how dangerous these guys can be.

4) King: I wasn't sure where to put the king, because he generally stays away from trouble during most of the game and doesn't move much, but this is hard for beginning players to grasp, and even if you do, it can be very hard to avoid attacks on the king, and one wrong move will cost you dearly. He is all valuable, but can't move very fast. All those king moves can get tricky in the endgame, too.

5) Bishops: Considered putting them at #4. As a pair, I feel like bishops are fairly intuitive to use effectively, but it's easy for one or both of them to be bogged down and stuck in a bad place. In open positions, they're a joy to work with. With only a bishop of one color, it can be somewhat difficult to steer the game to a place where your opponent's weak points are where the bishop can strike.

6) Rooks: There is subtlety in the use of the rook, especially in modern chess, but these guys work well together and, until the endgame, they can often be fairly static on the back rank, or doubled up on a file. The attacking lanes for a rook are pretty obvious, even to a beginner. Unlike knight vs. bishop, you wont typically find yourself with a headache trying to figure out when to trade off your rooks, and what for.

Sorry for my essay of an OP, but I was curious as to what you guys thought!

Sound interesting and comprehensive!

ya

the king is the most difficult to use well and knowledge of its powers are vital for turning draws and losses into wins  consider when it stops being a liability nd when it becomes your best aggresive piece generally in the endgame but are you getting it the edge it needs by recognising when the transition from middlegame to endgame is coming and activating him in a timely mannr from passive observer to king of all he surveys 

King moves in the ending feel natural to me most of the time.

I think you have it about right. Pawns the hardest because there are so many possibilities and you have to be very precise in a lot of endgames.

Like I said, the King was a hard one to rank. You could pretty much make an argument for it anywhere, since he sort of operates on a different plane than the other pieces. It's definitely difficult balancing endgame king position was middlegame kind safety.

I was gonna say, you really dont move the king much until the position is wide open. King position is constantly always important to monitor in the endgame, but I feel like the idea behind it is not as complicated as other considerations, important as it is.

And yeah, I considered putting pawns first on my list.

To me, bishops are the hardest to post properly, they get kicked around so much.  As a rule of thumb, Ns are easy; I'll go back to my DN days and say Ns belong at B3.  Rooks are pretty easy, too--they belong on open files or files that will become open.  Queens can be tricky in their own right, but for me, the pawns and the Bs are the easiest to go wrong with, and therefore the hardest to use effectively.

It's true, Bishops get kicked around a lot, but unlike knights, they have the fortune of being able to move in nice, straight lines for as long as they want, and open diagonals for bishops to work with are usually easier to identify than solid posts for knights to thrive in.

For most beginners it's the pawn, by far.

big taco is the hardest to lettuce goodly and it can enfold the king in its shell and it tastes gudd

the king

wait you revived a 7 year old thread to talk about taco lettuce

dang i ate tha king

hate

hes a useless lazy peice of **** 

he cant even move more than one square without getting tired

yum

Bishops