How Knights Move at Different Elos

Introduction

As I often repeat, as a not-so-comforting mantra after tilts and blunders, chess is just a board game.

Its greatness comes confined by just 64 squares, caged by incessant rules (what is en passant, anyway?) and each piece doomed to one specific movement pattern for the rest of eternity, or the rest of a classical game... same thing.

Yet between all these straight lines and unbending regulations, one piece stands out, bringing excitement to our square lives. Of course, I am speaking of the knight. It zigs and zags, the jester among the pieces. It fearlessly leaps over the others and mercilessly forks them. The knight's serpentine motion brings fear and joy to beginners and masters alike.

In this blog, I'll go though different ways that the knights are used at different levels of chess, from absolute beginner to World Champion.

U200: ???

We begin where all great players never do... the 100 rapid elo cesspool. You may be wondering: do 100 elo players even know how the knight moves? Yes, they do, and in fact, quite well. The beauty of knight strategies in this rating range lies in its secrecy. Nobody will ever, ever know why some of these knight moves have been played. The most careful of scrutiny isn't sufficient to unearth the artists' thought process. After all, how can you uncover thoughts that never happened?

Study the above game and you'll learn much about how the knight moves: always to the rim, never backwards, and doesn't require defense if it's hanging.

Jokes aside, it's clear that our protagonists know little about knights, or chess as a whole, but let's be humble. As Chernev famously said, every 300 was once a 200.

It's easy to laugh at 100 elo players' bizarre handling of minor pieces, but maybe their skills are most reflective of the knight's. Principles and rules make way for creativity. Indeed, some of the above knight moves are so creative that Stockfish can't even comprehend them. Maybe these players' choices to never move their knights backwards reflect their chess ideology: always go forward! 100 elo players perpetually improve and gain rating, and only partially because there's nowhere lower to go.

Before we move onto the next section, let's apply what you've learned by answering a quick quiz question:

Congrats if you got it wrong! In case it wasn't clear, this section was a joke... Don't actually move your queen first in the opening, no matter how much you desire to emulate U200 players!

201-600: The Drunken L

Tactics and board vision are key as we climb up the rating ladder. Each game inevitably features a blunder, usually multiple. Puzzles help you get better at both spotting and preventing them, and it’s how 500s hang pieces less often than their lower-rated past selves.

At this level, knights dance across the board, not in deep Steinitzian maneuvers but more so in the path of a drunken L. As the star of the show, knights are moved over and over in the opening, as if the players are trying to trace out constellations. Their rating graph becomes the Big Dipper!

White may have lost the game because they hung a queen, but they got into a bad position because of unprincipled knight moves. The knight was well-developed on c3: an active, central home. But White decided that the h3-square was such a huge upgrade that it warranted three tempi of relocation while forsaking castling.

This brings us to our first actual takeaway, and it's an opening principle: Don't move the same piece twice in the opening unless you gain time, space or material.

In chess, you want to develop all your pieces. No matter how strong your knight is, it can't fend off your opponent's whole army. It's important to show all your pieces some love, and though moving a piece twice may improve its position, it gets in the way of our larger goal.

I added an 'unless' at the end of this common idiom to make it a bit less dogmatic. For example, in the above game, I recommended White to play 2.e5, moving the pawn twice. This breaks our principle, right? No, 2.e5 is the best move. It gains time (forcing the f6-knight to move) and space (lodging the pawn deeper into Black's position). In fact, the alternative 2.Nc3 (which doesn't move the same piece twice) is a fair bit worse!

There are always exceptions to rules and finding them is important to becoming a better player. Take a look at the below position and apply what you've learned in the following quiz question.

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Good job if you got it right!

It may seem simple, but this was taken from a real game between players at this level, in which Black did indeed play the misguided 7…Nd4. When you rush into the heat of battle, with your clock ticking, palms sweating, and other Eminem lyrics occurring, keep in mind what you read in my blogs! (Just mine, no one else's )

601-1000: The Sacrificial Lamb

For most, it takes some dedication to reach the rating of 800.

Approaching the coveted four digit rating, players at this level clamor to improve. They often maneuver to the chess corners of YouTube, seeking first dodgy opening traps before finding instructional content, like a knight moving from dark squares to light. Tragically for us knight lovers, these YouTube traps often involve (unsound) knight sacrifices. For example, the Alien Gambit, Martian Gambit, Fishing Pole Trap, ICBM Trap etc.

All it takes is a couple minutes of preparation for your opponent to crush your trap. As you saw above, Black just plays the calm 3...e5. The missile is never launched and instead lays sadly on g3. The lesson here: avoid bad opening traps!

Opening traps are a tempting path to follow as they provide quick wins with little thought. But most traps are a gamble: they only work if your opponent messes up terribly and usually leave you much worse if not. As you climb in rating, more opponents will easily refute your traps. You'll be at a disadvantage, having little experience with principled opening play because cheap wins brought rating but not improvement. By memorizing traps, you're wasting chess study time and building bad habits.

One more key idea: The best way to refute a trap/gambit is to return material favorably! Though the most precise method is generally hanging onto the material and defending for your life, this is less effective in practical games. Your opponent may be grossly booked up on atrocious traps, or unleash some vile gambit you've never seen before. If you can return sacrificed material for a safe position with an advantage, that's the route you should travel.

Here's another quiz to test your learning and a made-up scenario to test your patience. You spot your friends playing OTB blitz. Wondering whether they're playing badly or horribly, you wander over to spectate. Your dumbest friend plays Black and opens with 1.d4 e5?, the infamous Englund Gambit. Evaluate his opponent's last move and answer the question.

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Nice work if you got it right! If you didn't, I urge you to reread the above section and work through my logic about returning material in a pinch.

1001-1400: The Forkmaster

We've now upgraded our skills, and also our equipment: many players at this level purchase physical chess sets. In these, the knight is the most intricately designed piece, its malicious glare carved so elegantly...

Knights are both terrifying and beautiful! When the opponent forks your king and queen, you feel sad, but when you fork their king and queen, you feel happy. That's why many amateurs have a love-hate relationship with the knight.

At this skill level we find countless knight tragicomedies, as beginners don't have the calculation skills and foresight to prevent forks. For this reason, improving at knight play involves mastering these terrifying and beautiful tactical deployments. In this section, I'll include some tactical exercises involving knight forks!

Most of my chess-playing friends in real life have settled at this section's skill level. I believe that 1000 elo is a fork in the road. Some choose the path of giving up as improvement slows. They move on, apathetic about rating stagnation. Some develop a deep love for the game and continue studying chess consistently, pushing to 2000 and well beyond.

If you're reading a chess blog, I assume you are the latter. Getting better at spotting knight forks is just the same as improving at tactics, chess as a whole, or anything else in life. You need practice and consistency.

I recommend doing 5-10 difficult puzzles per day, spending several minutes on each if needed, calculating everything with no guesswork. Remember that doing five puzzles every day is far better than cramming in fifty during a random afternoon and neglecting them again afterwards.

An awesome combination. Note that there's another solution, which the cold computer labels as better than the game's continuation: 20...Bxc3 21.Qxc3 Rxe3 22.Rxe3 Qc2+ 23.Qxc2 Nxe3 fork. Highlight to see the solution. If you found this, great work, you improved on the play of a 2600-rated GM! Leave it to the heartless, soulless computer to fork up a brilliant moment, its centipawn-calculating algorithm omitting the key factor: style points.

Thank you for trying the puzzles in this section, and congratulations if you solved them correctly. Especially that last one!

1401-1800: The Pathfinder

As we leave behind beginner territory, our horses leave behind safe defensive pastures for something far more exciting: outposts!

An outpost is an advanced square you control which can't be defended by an enemy pawn. Knights are very strong on outposts as they can't be challenged and extend their influence on various squares deep into the enemy camp. But a diagram is worth a thousand definitions:

The above knight is extremely powerful in a few different ways.

• It can't be challenged by any opponent piece or pawn.
• It controls its full potential of eight squares.
• The squares it controls are deep in the opponent's territory, restricting their pieces.
• It blocks Black's backwards d-pawn, preventing central breaks.

Clearly, outposts are crucial positional advantages. But after getting your knight to an outpost, what can you actually do with it? Does it just sit there and look pretty? No, it does far more. Advanced players win games by converting positional advantages, like outposts, into something more concrete, like material. This can be done by finding a winning tactic.

Tactics flow from a superior position.

-Bobby Fischer

Outposts are often the birthplaces of tactical shots. The below puzzle is taken from a game played by Fischer himself, and he uses his own adage to find a simple winning tactic.

Fischer's opponent was no weakling; he was the Brazilian champion at the time of the game. But his previous move was 22…Rb8?? — how could he miss such a simple combination? Well, bad moves are played in bad positions! See that Fischer's careful plan to carve out this outpost is very instructive, beginning as far back as move 11. The full game is worth studying if you want to read ahead a bit for lessons we cover in a later section!

1801-2200: The Gatekeeper

As we approach the 2000 level, we players often hit plateaus and roadblocks. I certainly did, being stuck at the 1800-1900 level for about a year and a half! As our steady pawn of progression is halted, we seek improvement through more mystical sources, and begin hearing whispers of a shadowy secret called... positional play. We learn of another key role the knight plays: Nimzowitsch's blockade.

Blockades are a common theme in games at this level. But why do knights blockade? Why not bishops or rooks or queens? Knights are placed in front of enemy pawns because of their leaping abilities. Unlike every other piece, the knight can peek over blockaded pawns and continue to influence the game even in their defensive position. The below position, taken from Silman's Reassess Your Chess, illustrates this.

Passed pawns are dangerous, described by Nimzowitsch as criminals, and blockades are key to keeping them in check. Now that you've learned how knights are the perfect blockaders, give them a test drive. In the below positional puzzle, taken from a game played by Nimzowitsch himself, find the correct way to stop the b-pawn's villainous advance.

Great work! The game continued 23...a5 and Nimzowitsch stopped the b-pawn in its tracks with 24.a3. Nimzowitsch went on to win from this slightly worse position, thanks to the help of his beloved blockade.

2201-2600: The Octopus

We've arrived at the advanced rating range, and the knight outposts we study become more advanced as well. In the earlier section on outposts, we examined knights occupying robust squares on the fifth rank. However, the knight's true potential is even greater. Outposts on the sixth rank entirely transform your knight into an octopus, as it controls key squares deeper in your opponent's position. Moreover, high-level players don't sit around waiting for outposts to magically appear. They make them happen!

Uncorking one of the greatest victories ever, Kasparov walks us through the process of creating an octopus and how to convert the positional advantage into a win. With the shrewd 13...Bf5, he takes control of a weakness Karpov didn't even know he created: the d3-square. Soon later his knight occupies that square and transmogrifies into the feared octopus.

Of course, Garry doesn't slow down after planting his octopus firmly on d3. He places the rest of his pieces on active squares, takes space on both sides of the board, and his play is calm and unhurried. He makes many improving moves in the slow build-up to the game's finale.

Kasparov also incorporates other ideas we've learned. He blockades Karpov's passed pawn with 23...Nd7 and wins the game through a fork, 34...Nf2+. This legendary game was the perfect example to wrap up our blog. Players in this rating range should definitely consider further study! Check out this video if you enjoyed the game. Kasparov himself takes us though his moves and thoughts.

Let's return to the Fischer game explored earlier and rewind time a few moves. Below is a positional puzzle, and our task is simple: get the knight onto an outpost on d5!

Congratulations to those who got it correct and I apologize to those who didn't. Think about what makes an outpost an outpost. Our knight shouldn't be challenged and quickly traded off. If the knight immediately hops into d5, the bishop will capture it, and we no longer have a knight on an outpost. The text move is more patient and takes preventative measures to ensure our knight has a bright future ahead.

Note that the immediate Nd5 is a strong move indeed, but doesn't lead to us having a knight on the d5-square, as was asked in the puzzle's parameters.

2600+: ???

Like a Knight's Tour, we have gone full circle and returned where we originally started, with a series of question marks indicating confusion (or a big-league blunder, in the eyes of us avid game analyzers). I created this section because knight moves at such a high level become truly incomprehensible, at least for mere mortals like me. I'll highlight one move which I felt featured a completely bizarre top-level knight strategy: a World Champion giving up their steed for seemingly no reason!

After seeing Spassky's Nc6 idea, Taimanov commented: "I would rather resign the game than to make such a move..."

I would not. Clearly, neither would Spassky, who fought extremely hard in a long endgame and managed a draw after an error in time pressure. While his brilliant move may be ugly, it demonstrates the resilience of a champion. Spassky played like a knight: his moves were tricky, and he blockaded Averbakh from a clean domination win!

Conclusion

Chess players across the globe lie slumped in their chair, defeated by their screen and the Herculean intellectual challenge of decoding the knight’s movements. Maybe we need to ask Magnus Carlsen more questions about this in his press conferences!

Some say the knight moves in an L, others that it moves in a T. Some say “two spaces forward, one space to the side”. Some say that the knight can move to all squares in a 5x5 grid not on the same file, rank, or diagonal as it. Though that last one was a bit confusing, these explanations get you to the same point at the end, like a knight manoeuvring to a beautiful outpost.

Now you guys finally know how the knight moves! I’m sorry about all the knight analogies and puns, good night everyone 😴 See you in the next blog.