Kirin (chess) Kirin (chess) A kirin is a fairy chess piece that moves as a ferz or a dabbaba. In notation, it is given the symbol FD. In this article, the kirin is represented by an inverted knight. The kirin is also known as giraffe ( ). The kirin appears under this name (Japanese: 麒麟, "kirin") in the 14th-century Japanese game of chu shogi, and also in many other shogi variants. It appears in Ralph Betza's Chess on a Really Big Board. It is approximately equal to a knight in value. Two kirins can force checkmate on a bare king without 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.