Knight (chess)

The knight in the game of chess, representing a mounted soldier and often depicted as a horse's head, moves in a odd way. Each separate move may be visualised as stepping exactly one square horizontally or vertically and then one square diagonally away from the direction of the original cell. See the diagram to the left for the eight legal moves of an unblocked knight. Unlike other chess pieces, the knight ignores any pieces in the path of its move, which is a "jump" directly to the destination square. Like other pieces, it captures an enemy piece on its destination square. Since it is capable of jumping over obstructing pieces, the knight is considered to be more valuable earlier in the game when the board is more crowded; once the board becomes more sparsely populated by pieces as they are captured the knight's value is diminished.

Note: The knight is the only piece that can be in position to attack a queen without being in the queen's line of attack. It is also not attacked by a king, bishop, or rook which it attacks. These features make the knight especially well-suited for executing a fork.