Knight (chess) ♞) Knight (chess) The knight (♘ ♞) is a piece in the game of chess, representing a knight (armored cavalry). It is normally represented by a horse's head and neck. Each player starts with two knights, which begin on the row closest to the player, between the rooks and bishops. Colloquially it is sometimes referred to as a "horse", which is also the translation of the piece's name in several languages. Some languages refer to it as the "jumper", reflecting the knight's ability to move over pieces in its way: Polish "skoczek", Danish/Norwegian "springer", German "Springer", Luxembourgish "Sprénger", Slovene "skakač".
History of chess by the common public, and even the courtly society, which continued to enjoy the now-prohibited chess tournaments uninterrupted. The pieces, which had been nonrepresentational in Islamic countries (see piece values in shantranj), changed shape in Christian cultures. Carved images of men and animals reappeared. The shape of the rook, originally a rectangular block with a V-shaped cut in the top, changed; the two top parts separated by the split tended to get long and hang over, and in some old pictures look like horses' heads. The split top of the piece now called the bishop was interpreted as a bishop's