Knight distances: a simple chess chart to make quicker decisions

Some shortcuts in chess can be useful. The chart that I'm sharing with you has been invaluable, in some of my games. It shows how many "hops" the knight has to do in order to reach a specific square. Memorizing a small part of it is also quite easy.

When pondering about a possible tactic, knowing how many moves your knight needs in order to reach a square can be extremely useful.

Examples of usage

Let's say, for instance, that you have spot a nice outpost and that it would be nice to put your knight there. How realistic is it to reach that destination if the knight needs four moves and in the meanwhile you have to handle other pressing matters on the chessboard?

Medium-term goals can be set, of course, but you must be aware that a long distance between the knight and the outpost makes that goal a medium-term one and that the outpost might not be there, after those four moves.

Another scenario that actually has happened to me: your opponent has two passed pawns and you want to calculate if your knight can somehow interfere with their promotion. Knowing how many moves the knight needs to reach each promotion square (or other squares along the pawns' path) can help you to decide if the piece is too far away to interfere with the promotion of the first pawn but close enough to create some trouble to the second pawn.

Every tactic or strategy needs to take under consideration many interconnected aspects and how quickly you can make good use of your knight is one of them.

How to use the chart

The easiest way to use the chart is to memorize only two key pieces of information.

Starting from you knight and proceeding horizontally or vertically, the first numbers are 3-2-3-2-3. That means that you need 3 moves to reach the square next to the knight, 2 moves to reach the subsequent square, 3 for the next one, and so on.

Starting from you knight and proceeding diagonally, the first numbers are 2-4-2-4.

Remembering these two simple numeric patterns can help you to quickly calculate how to effectively deploy your knight.

Be aware that these numeric patterns don't hold for the farthest squares (see the full chart) but it's also less likely that you will ever need this information during a blitz game!