Fairy chess piece a "crowned" piece. The crowned knight combines the knight with the king's moves. The dragon king of shogi is a crowned rook (rook + king). Marine pieces are compound pieces consisting of a rider (for ordinary moves) and a locust (for captures) in the same directions. Marine pieces have names alluding to the sea and its myths, e.g., nereide (marine bishop), mermaid (marine queen), or poseidon (marine king). Some classes of pieces come from a certain game, and will have common characteristics. Examples are the pieces from xiangqi, a Chinese game similar to chess. The most common are the "leo",
Sacrifice (chess) Sacrifice (chess) In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece with the objective of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value. Any chess piece except the king may be sacrificed. Because players usually try to hold on to their own pieces, offering a sacrifice can come as an unpleasant surprise to one's opponent, putting him off balance and causing much precious time to be wasted trying to calculate whether the sacrifice is sound or