What Bishop?

Everything you need to know about the Bishop (which is my favorite piece!)

**Info for beginners:

(1) Bishops want open lines and diagonals to be active

(2) Bishops are good at defending weak *squares*, especially weak square complexes of the same color

(3) A Bishop developed outside the pawn chain can be just as effective (even though it's a "bad" bishop) as a bishop which has pawns on the opposite color.

(4) Bishops that seem "passive" can often be doing a good job, and can be very strong if the pawns blocking are mobile.

(5) Opposite colored bishops, especially in the middlegame, create possibilities for attacking the enemy king. In such situations, the activity of your bishop is VERY important (see below: (3) ). In such situations, it's a good idea to make your pawn chain the opposite color of your bishop. 

**Info for intermediate players:

(1) Bishops can work well on their initial square, which sometimes saves you valuable time, because you don't need to "develop" them.

(2) A Bishop is worth more than a knight. This is very controversial, but I believe that the Bishop's average value is worth very slightly more than that of a knight. Hence, a practical way to obtain a material advantage is to swap your knight for the opponent's bishop. Keep in mind that this material advantage is worth less than some positional advantages. 

There is a reason in master games, you tend to see the masters retreating their protected bishops from the opponent's knights more often than the other way around. 

(3) A Bishop's activity is the most variable of all pieces. This is a very very important characteristic that gives the Bishop a bunch of other properties that I've listed here.

-For example, it can be as strong as a rook (controlling 13 squares), or as weak as a pawn. 

-The activity of the other pieces is usually more moderate (for instance, knights and queens are always pretty active, and rooks can often find open files, or create them). 

Hence, if you have a bishop, it tends to give you greater possibilities to increase your activity!

(4) The Bishop gets stronger as the position clears up - along with (3), this means that your Bishop is a long term asset, in most cases, since most of the time the position is at least somewhat fluid.

Keep in mind these are general principles, and concrete variations always come first! Anyways, hope this gives you what you want!

That's true - this study is very well known, where Kaufman concluded that Knights and Bishops, by themselves (excluding Bishop pair) were worth about 3.25 pawns or around that.

But I would actually disagree with Kaufman! His study was really great, but I have some reasons (obviously not scientific, but subjective and based off my own experiences and computer analysis ) that it's an outdated study, and that if you look at more recent, stronger games and use a stronger engine, you might find a slight material advantage to bishops even by themselves.

This is just an opinion, of course.  Also, such miniscule material advantage should not be blindly taken (it should never be!), but you of course evaluate the position carefully. 

And yes, very often bishops are exchanged for knights to damage structure, which is a positional consideration that may overshadow the "material" costs. 

Yeah, pretty much it's my feelings!

One thing I'll admit - (OK, so at the beginner level, knights are tricky, so they're better) at the intermediate level, but not necessarily advanced (like titled player level) I feel Bishops are easier to use, which is why I think they're a bit better.

This is because since bishop activity is so variable, you usually have a clearer plan to increase your activity in fluid positions. For a knight, you have to rely on your opponent creating accessible, weak squares, while with the bishop, as long as you don't close up the position entirely (and bishops can often be good in somewhat locked positions), you have more say in the activity. I've gotten better positions using this principle time and time again.

The second reason is that you can usually easily exchange your opponent's knight with your bishop if necessary. 

Of course, strong players won't allow this much at all, if it's not good for them. 

(I do have to admit one thing though! The game that got me a over 2000 USCF, where I beat a 2050 FIDE player was a game in which, after being worse throughout the entire opening and middlegame, I finally defused my opponent's pressure and got a drawn, but not dead drawn endgame w/ pawns on both sides with me having K+N+pawns vs his K+B+pawns, and I won with the knight!)