Knight Pairs and Bishop Pairs

Isn't it possible to have two light sq bishops if you lose the dark and then promote a pawn to a bishop? Or is it ater 1 am and I am not thinking clearly?

I'm having to deal with some creep in another post telling me the old "have you tried google" in response to a question I posed. Original.

A lot of nice people on this site.

Yes, that is intuitive to me. My question was quite different though.

You could theoretically have nine LSB's, I don't think there would be very many positions where a second LSB would be useful or necessary though.

The person in the other post may have meant it innocently, only having Googled "vanilla" chess endings...

Only nine?

No, definitely not (to the second part of your post). It was a question I had about good chess software for Macs. They were just bored trying to troll like 700 people per day on this site. You would have to read the obnoxious post....I have seen far worse, however. Most people are pretty helpful and nice though. Maybe his imaginary girlfriend broke up with him.

Generalities about bishops vs knights or queen vs two rooks are true, but generalities are no substitute for carefully examining the unique features of the position. I try to not take generalities too seriously. Better to trust one's own judgement which, of course, is sometimes wrong. But how else to learn?

karpov played a game in the nimzo where he had a knight pair vs bishop pair

Then again there was a QGD ragozin where he completely dominated with the bishop pair

You must have read GM Naroditsky's mind...

http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-two-knight-advantage

Great article, and that answers the OP's question far better than any of us did. Thanks.

Nice find, TJB. That GM lives near me, actually. He writes good articles.

Thanks.

Can anyone out there please explain to me how to master the en passant move on the computer, does it exist? Parisian GMs comments will be much welcomed. Has anyone achieved it in a live game? 

What is en passant?

 " Senchean wrote:

But the thread isn't about being better at knights OVER bishops, its more about having a proper understanding of them, and how they relate to each other within the position. "

But this is only theoretically true as almost every game is between players with unequal and usually asymmetrical skill sets.

Knights are more conceptually difficult to use than bishops but in the right hands are a powerful lever to quickly exploit positional weaknesses as they arise. Indeed they can better help them arise due to the added complexity of understanding what knights in especially cunning hands might do and therefore presenting them with the opportunity. That is, they're better at putting the opponent in a position which makes a mistake more likely and that is much of what chess is about: how to give the opponent the most opportunities to make a mistake. Limiting your own mistakes while maximising and exploiting your opponent’s is part and parcel  of learning deploy your pieces and foil your opponents deployment. 

“A proper understanding of them” must include the relative skills of the players deploying them.

Since skill differences are relative this applies up and down the scale; I'm happier with knights when playing a weaker player but leery of facing them against a stronger player and in reality I’m usually in one of those two situations. 

In that case I try to exchange knights or get a bishop pair against a knight and a bishop because I feel that they will likely use their knights better than I will.

Like gaining an unadvanced passed pawn early, you might not be able to take full advantage of your bishop pair if you can't survive long enough to exchange major pieces and a goodly number of pawns, but if you do so then you can hold your own in the endgame even against a (somewhat) better player. Especially if you have deployed them so that, as the board clears, your bishops inherit open lines of attack on his castle or other critical area.