Desperado (chess) Desperado (chess) In chess, a desperado piece is a piece that is or trapped, but captures an enemy piece before it is itself captured. This can be in either a situation where both sides have pieces, "...in which you use your doomed piece to eat as much material as possible before it dies"; or alternatively a sacrifice that will result in stalemate if it is captured. A simple example illustrating the first definition comes from a 1958 game between future World Champions Tigran Petrosian and Bobby Fischer (see diagram). White had just captured the e5-pawn with his knight on f3.
Fairy chess piece Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions (the princess, empress, and occasionally amazon), many of these are not used beyond the individual games they were invented for. Today's chess exists because of variations someone made to the rules of an earlier version of the game. For example, the queen we use today was once able to move only a single square in a diagonal direction, a "ferz". Today, this piece still starts next to the king, but has gained new movement and became today's queen.