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". In
Empress (chess) attacking archbishop two squares diagonally away), while the rook+knight compound cannot. Worse, the word empress suggests a piece stronger than the queen, while this piece is at best equal to and perhaps weaker than the queen, especially in the endgame. The empress was first used in Turkish Great Chess, a large medieval variant of chess, where it was called the "war machine" (dabbabah; not to be confused with the piece more commonly referred to as the dabbaba today, which is the (2,0) leaper). It was introduced in the West with Carrera's chess from 1617, where it was called a "champion",