The Knights are my personal favourites because they are unique. The Queen can do both Bishop's and Rook's moves but nothing moves like a Knight does.

However, moving your Knights to active play can be very tricky and it is easy to have your Knights on the opposite side of the battlefield. There's a saying which goes:

  • A knight on the rim is dim

The rim are the sides of the board, the knight has the biggest reach and power in the center and it is the weakest on the rim. So this makes it very attractive to move your knights in the beginning of the game straight to the center. 

The problem experienced by many players is that it takes too much time to start an attack with your C or F pawn, but this is what you eventually want to do.  Aim your own pieces towards the opponent's king and break open the center. 

For an easier and smoother game I recommend in the opening to

  • Only move one knight in front of the pawns
This gives a clear direction straight from the beginning where you want to develop and castle, and also what pawns to move. Instead of moving your second knights in front of the pawn, you can:
  •  push the C/F pawn up two ranks, and move the Knight forward so it stands behind the pawn
  • Push the D/E pawn up one rank, and move the Knight to the side so it stands behind the pawn

It opens up a possibility to start a push with your C pawn in different ways. In some games the Queen's Knight can even go all the way to the king side to prepare a strong attack and open the way for the dark Bishop's.

How to deal with the Bishop's is a topic for a next post.

btw I'm still figuring this Scorum Editor out so every post I will try to make it look a little bit better. Right now I've added the illustrations but they're way too big. I'll try to make them smaller and use annotations such as arrows on them.

If you like my posts please leave a comment or feedback. If you want to play a game you can find me on lichess.org with the username roelofn