Which way do the knights face?

When playing on a real board, I have always placed my knights so that they are facing forward, i.e. looking towards the opponent, however in the Carlsen vs the world game, the knights seem to be facing sideways. Is this purely a matter of preference or is there a "correct" way?

I've seen some players get really annoyed when you say j'adoube and make their knights face backwards...

I like to keep mine facing inwards towards my king.  

 Actually, you are not allowed to adust your opponents pieces......

Mine face the enemy.

All preference.

Backwards facing would be rarest. That leaves forward, all left, all right, sideways to the center, and diagonal to the center of the board. I suppose diagonal outside facing would be odd as well.

There is the proof!  Great photo!

I've always gone with facing left, I think I had heard that Kasparov always did or something and I just copied. I guess it's just personal preference, although if I do get to the board first or set it up myself I will make my opponents face the same way and hope he doesn't change them.

I have watched with amusement when an opponent sits down to the set up I've arranged and the first thing he's done is adjust with alacrity the knights to his preference.

This is pretty common. I'd say.

Always insisting your knights face a certain way sounds a little OCD to me.

Nah, insisting which way your pawns face...now that would be OCD to me.

Drawing faces on your pawns...angry and menacing faces.

I always face my pieces straight towards the other player. The bishops and knights have to be almost perfectly facing straight. But if you've been reading my topic posts about keeping stats, you'll know why

I always preferred having them facing each other at the start of the game, so the king knight faces left and the queen knight faces right.  Then I maintained that facing as the game progressed, so I could always easily tell which one was which.  Useful when reading descriptive notation, and it just became a habit for all games.

I face knights away from where I eventually plan to move them. It's a head fake. If you do it very precisely, it creates doubt of your sanity in your opponent's mind. Regardless, their puzzled look is worth the effort.

Determining the direction knights face is not possible online. Perhaps, this could be an important improvement for chess.com. Adjusting their expression is probably asking too much.

Yeah.

I don't really have a preference myself.  I used to face them forward, but then noticed after moving them because of the grasp of my thumb and finger they would be placed looking at the upper left corner of the square.  So for a while I set them up like this, facing north west I guess you could say (lol).  At a tournament it kind of just depends on how I happen to place them, or what my preference is at the moment.

Traditionally, they face to White's left.  I tend to face them toward the center.  Facing them forward tends to make them less visable.  Too bad you can't control how your opponent places them.

In the diagrams both the KN and QN face toward White's Left, unless you flip the diagram so that Black is on the bottom; then, it they point to White's Right.  I have also noticed that the Bishops mitre point up to the top of the diagram; regardless of board orientation.

Dee.

Edited to correct misstatement about Bishops mitres pointing down.

I think this is many people's argument for facing the knights to the left.  Either to the left or straight forward are probably the most common ways you'll see it.  However in diagrams it's simply the 2d representation of a 3d object -- of course the knights will have a profile view, as drawing them straight on would make the shape confusing.

Not that any way is wrong, but this argument isn't so convincing to me when people mention it :)