Descriptive notation abbreviated to the first letter of its name: K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop, P for pawn. Knight begins with the same letter as king, so it is abbreviated to either "Kt" (used in older chess literature) or "N". "N" is used in this article. In 1944 "Chess Review" received many letters debating the change from Kt to N . In descriptive notation each square has two names, depending on Black's or White's viewpoint. Each is given a name corresponding with the piece that occupies the first at the start of the game. Thus
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.