Amazon (chess) Amazon (chess) An amazon (also known as a queen+knight compound) is a fairy chess piece that can move like a queen or a knight (or, equivalently, like a rook, bishop, or knight). It may thus be considered the sum of all orthodox chess pieces (not including pawns, nor the royal powers of a king). It cannot jump over other pieces when moving as a queen, but may do so when moving as a knight. In diagrams in this article, the amazon is represented by an inverted rook. Chess moves in this article use A as notation for the amazon. The
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.