Knights n Bishops

Whether you are playing black or white, which piece do you prefer to open the game with: a bishop, or a knight? To add to that, where would you think the best place to position a bishop/knight be? Would you move your knight forward to control the centre, or would you put more emphasis on moving your biship so he would have more 'diagonal influence' on the chessboard?

  Remember, this is only for the first two or three moves.

Your comments would be most appreciated. Thanks

This is a bit of a generalization ofc ..

In general it is best to first develop your knights and after that develop your bishops. There are 2 reasons for this:

• First (and most important) for the knights the most natural postions are very clear. Most often these are f3 and c3 (there they have most influence towards the center).
• Second is that strong players value the bishop slightly higher in most positions. They are happy to exchange a knight for a bishop. By developing you knight first you give them less chance to attack your bishops

For bishops it is not so clear where they need to go. It largely depends on the pawn structure. Sometimes there are better places on the humble squares g2/e2 and sometimes on the more aggressive squares.

In general white develops the white squared bishop before the dark squared bishop in order to be able to castle asap

Hope this helps a bit

Thanks :) Thought the same thing - the knights are better at the early stages of the game and pawn structure is crucial. However, in the later stages of the game where one is looking for a promotion or a check mate, I find they become pretty useless compared with bishops and rooks.

Knights are never useless .. and understanding when knights are stronger than bissops is one of the more advanced themes of chess. 

However ... it is generally more clear where the knights need to be places early in the opening