Nightrider (chess) Nightrider (chess) A nightrider (also known as a knightmare or unicorn, though the latter sometimes also means the bishop+nightrider compound) is a fairy chess piece that can move any number of steps as a knight in the same direction. The nightrider is often represented by a symbol similar to the knight's icon, but altered in a way to indicate the additional straight-line motion. In this article the nightrider is represented with an inverted knight, and notation N (in which case the "knight" is abbreviated as S for German "Springer"). The nightrider was invented by T. R. Dawson in 1925, and
Chess piece outset. Some small magnetic sets, designed to be compact and/or for travel, have pieces more like those used in shogi and xiangqi – each piece being a similar flat token, with a symbol printed on it to identify the piece type. On computers, chess pieces are often 2D symbols on a 2D board, although some programs have 3D graphics engines with more traditional designs of chess pieces. Unicode contains symbols for chess pieces in both white and black. The value assigned to a piece attempts to represent the potential strength of the piece in the game. As the game develops,