Chess For Dummies. Eade James

general rule also holds true, the knight loves to be in the center of the action and is forced to retreat only when attacked by the lowly pawn (which I describe in the following section). Otherwise, the knight just holds its ground and dares you to capture it. The knight considers charging off into battle an honor and hates to watch while others are left to carry the day. That said, sometimes the knight needs to be defended.

The knight’s truly unique power is its ability to leap over chessmen, either its own or those of the enemy. In fact, this piece is the only one that can move off the back rank at the start of the game without a preliminary pawn move, as illustrated in Figure 2-15.

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       FIGURE 2-15: A knight hurdles a pawn.

      THE KNIGHT’S TOUR

      The knight’s tour is an interesting exercise where you position the knight anywhere on the chessboard and then move it to every other square on the board, without ever landing on the same square twice. Grandmaster George Koltanowski was famous for the knight’s tour and could do it without seeing the board (calling out the name of the square where the knight was to move). In fact, he once did it in front of more than 300 enthralled spectators on the occasion of his 90th birthday!

      Scooting Around as the Army’s Runt: The Pawn

       Although chess people sometimes refer to all the chessmen collectively as pieces, they don’t really consider a pawn to be a piece. If you lose a knight, you can either say, “I lost a knight” or “I lost a piece,” but if you lose a pawn, you don’t say, “I lost a piece.” You say, “I lost a pawn” instead. (Why? Because that’s just the way chess people talk.) Pawns are only pawns, but chess has a lot of them!

Figure 2-16 shows how the pawns are set up at the start of the game.

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       FIGURE 2-16: The pawns line up for battle.

The pawns are the foot soldiers of chess, and you know how foot soldiers are treated. Their powers are very restricted. The pawn can move only one square forward, except on its very first move, when it has the choice of moving one or two squares forward. A pawn can’t move backward or sideways – only forward. Figure 2-17 shows the options for the white pawns at the starting line.

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       FIGURE 2-17: In the opening, the white pawns can move to the X-marked squares.

The pawn, unlike a piece, captures differently than it moves. It captures diagonally, one square forward to either side. But it still takes the opponent’s place on a square when it captures, just as the other chessmen do. Figure 2-18 illustrates the pawn’s capturing ability.

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       FIGURE 2-18: The white pawn can capture an opponent on either of the X-marked squares.

In Figure 2-19a, an enemy pawn occupies one of the squares that the white pawn can attack. Figure 2-19b shows how the white pawn captures the black pawn (although the black pawn could have captured the white pawn if it were black’s turn!).

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       FIGURE 2-19: Pawn fight: White captures black.

If no member of the opposing army occupies a square that the pawn attacks, then the pawn can move forward. If a piece or another pawn is in front of it, but nothing is on the squares the pawn can capture, the pawn is stymied and can’t move; chess players say the pawn is locked. In Figure 2-20, the pawns on d5 and d6 are locked … by each other.

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       FIGURE 2-20: A pair of pawns locks horns.

When two pawns are locked together as in Figure 2-20, you should try to bring another pawn alongside to help out. This strategy is so common that it’s referred to as a lever. You can see where that term comes from, because the second pawn attempts to pry the first one free. Figure 2-21 illustrates the use of the lever.

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       FIGURE 2-21: Pawn love and bravery, known as the lever.

       I find it helpful to think of the foot soldier holding a spear and a giant shield. The shield is in front of the foot soldier so that the soldier can thrust only to the right or left side of the shield and can’t thrust in front of it. The soldier needs a comrade in arms to come to his aid.

      With the additional pawn’s aid, now two of the pawns can capture each other. If the black pawn captures the white pawn, the remaining white pawn is free to move. Often the lever can be used to pry open an otherwise locked position, a technique that’s seen over and over again in the games of the masters.

       Because pawns can be stopped in their tracks so easily, chess players have discovered that pawns are most powerful when they stay by each other’s side. This way, two pawns – or pawn duos – can guard the square in front of the other. By helping each other out, both pawns become more mobile, and their influence on the game grows.

      You need to know a few more things about pawns, but I don’t discuss them in this chapter. I cover pawn promotion and something called en passant (or “in passing”) in Chapter 5, which deals with special moves. The pawns’ placement is collectively referred to as the pawn structure, and I examine this concept in detail in Chapter 3. I also devote a whole chapter to pawn structures that are associated with particular openings – see Chapter 10 for information on pawn formations.