Wrong, buddy. The activity of any piece is determined by it's relationship to the pawn structure--an open structure favors the bishops, while a closed one favors the knights. Each minor piece has it's own advantages--the bishop for range, while the knight isn't color-bound. As I said, the only concrete advantage is the the 2 bs can force mate--other than that, it's the position.
KNIGHTS OR BISHOPS
Sort:
ThrillerFan wrote:
Until I see the position, this is an unanswerable question.
It is an absolute disgrace for anybody to think that any one piece is better than any other from a general basis.
There are positions where I'd rather have the Bishop (or Bishops) over the Knight (or Knights). There are positions where I'd rather have the Knight (or Knights) over the Bishop (or Bishops).
There are even positions I'd take a Knight or Bishop over a Rook!
Until a specific position is given, anybody with any chess intelligence at all would give ZERO PREFRENCE TO ANY INDIVIDUAL CHESS PIECE OVER ANOTHER (except maybe the King).
Hard to think of a situation where I would not want a queen over rook or bishop; unless maybe it meant stalemate I guess. But is there any other reason?
Aug 9, 2013
0
#24
ab121705 wrote:
ThrillerFan wrote:
Until I see the position, this is an unanswerable question.
It is an absolute disgrace for anybody to think that any one piece is better than any other from a general basis.
There are positions where I'd rather have the Bishop (or Bishops) over the Knight (or Knights). There are positions where I'd rather have the Knight (or Knights) over the Bishop (or Bishops).
There are even positions I'd take a Knight or Bishop over a Rook!
Until a specific position is given, anybody with any chess intelligence at all would give ZERO PREFRENCE TO ANY INDIVIDUAL CHESS PIECE OVER ANOTHER (except maybe the King).
Hard to think of a situation where I would not want a queen over rook or bishop; unless maybe it meant stalemate I guess. But is there any other reason?
exactly!
The only concrete advantage of the two bishops is that they can force checkmate against a lone king, whereas the two knights cannot. Other than that, it depends on the position.
Wrong. Positions in which two bishops are superior are more common than positions in which other minor-piece combinations are superior, so it's not true that being able to mate with them is the reason they are considered superior. Also, it's perfectly possible to mate with bishop+knight, but the two bishops are superior to bishop+knight more frequently too, so considered better on average, even if one does still have to look at the position.
tl;dr: the fact that you have to look at the position to know which is better doesn't imply that when you do look, what you'll find much more frequently is that the bishops are better.