The Purpose of Chess Pieces

The movements of chess are weird. Why do pawns move forward but attack diagonally? Why does a Knight move in an L direction? Why are the bishops restricted to diagonal movement? etc, These are questions I've been trying to understand and I feel that if I understood it better I would better grasp chess as a whole and really be able to sink my teeth into strategy.

It appears to me that each piece has specific limitations and advantages and if I can understand why those pieces have them I think I could really better understand the game.

As a comparison let me use Dungeons and Dragons. Each character class has limitations and advantages that exist to support your party. A mage isn't great in up close combat so he sets back and gives support to the fighters on the front line. The thief isn't good at close combat either but are good at surprise attacks and stealth. Fighters are usually terrible at range attacks but good at close-combat so their job is usually on the front line, one could see them as pawns.

It helps me to see how the limitations and advantages of the character class support the party as a whole. Which is what I'm trying to get my head around in chess.

Could someone explain what the idea is behind the pieces' movements? The advantages and disadvantages and why they exist? I know whoever invented chess was a genius and if I can just crack the code behind the logic I think it'll help me get to that next level.

Thank you and sorry for the long winded intro.

I dont have a good answer to your question,

but i think it must be something to do with war philosophy

łał

Sounds like you should play the Game of GO

In chinese chess the knights can be blocked and cannot jump over pieces

This is an interesting topic, ncollins1985. You could compare the chess pieces to units from "real-time strategy" games like Starcraft or Command & Conquer.

King: Needs protecting early on, but gets safer the fewer units there are left. Comparable to a "base".

Queen: A "super-unit" that is stronger than everything else in the game individually, but can't do everything alone and needs support from other units to show its true power. I like to compare it to something like the MARV from Command & Conquer 3.

Bishop & Rook: Specialised units that do one thing well and nothing else.

Knight: A unit that can do something no other unit types can (e.g. teleport).

Pawns: Weak units that can be mass trained quickly. They attack weakly but quickly, and are best used to poke at weak holes in the enemy position to clear the way for the stronger units.

Heres a fact: why do chess peices have holes? it's to put them on top of eachother to capture!

I don't think knowing this will help you, but let's try. 

We don't know what the protochess game was, but we believe it was from India.  It was a 4 army game, and you can play a reconstruction here: https://www.chess.com/variants/chaturanga

The 4 pieces are the Chariot(rook), the Horse(knight), the Elephant(Bishop) and the Adviser(Queen).  Each piece represented a part of the army at the time. 

The rook and knight is unchanged from modern chess.  The knight is probably borrowed from an earlier game that someone liked and incorporated into chaturanga. 

The elephant is a hopping piece that moves 2 squares diagonal, and is an excellent supporting piece for the pawns.  

The adviser moves like a bishop, except only 1 square.  

Chaturanga is an extremely positional game, because your adviser and elephant are basically just tall pawns.  Only your chariots are very mobile, and they are endgame pieces like modern chess. 

Modern chess derives from a variant called "Mad Queen Chess", where the Bishop and Queen were given their modern movement patterns. It made the game much more tactical. Almost every modern move, such as castling, en passant, stalemate, was created by trial and error to compensate for the bishop's and queen's new movement. 

This is a dumb question. It’s like asking why checker pieces are circles. Or why there is an ace in a deck of cards. Or why the reverse card exists in uno. They’re just the pieces used to play the game. That’s it.

Pawns attack at a diagonal because they represent footmen thrusting diagonally with a polearm.

The pieces work together. The rooks defend each other while attacking. The bishops cover up each other's weaknesses. The knights are excellent at creating threats. The queen is a powerful piece that can protect multiple pieces. The pawns can be used to capture pieces and control squares at a low cost. The king is absolutely essential in checkmate when the checkmating pieces need protection.