What's the best chess piece other than queen?

bishop, helps you fuck people when they least expect it and set up traps

Rook/castle. It's got easy to use brute strength as a piece. Probably bishop second (or even tied) but I feel like it's being locked to one tile color hurts its usability.
Knight is neat for tricks but it's also touchy to set up, which is definitely a downside.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(chess)
Knight
He makes the impossible very possible. He is my most used figure.

Rook endgames are the most common type, studying them is essential.

That doesn't make them less good. Rooks are GOAT

Lasker-Schlechter in 1908 was probably the first chess world championship that had a really high quality of play, all the games were long, complicated, and fought out to the bitter end. The world championships in the 1880s-1890s were full of shitty games and most were gross mismatches (>Lasker routing a 60 year old Steinitz).

Having said that, Emanuel Lasker's 27 years as world champ is kind of bullshit since prior to FIDE, world champions could choose their opponent. So of course Lasker always picked guys like Tarrasch and Janowski whom he knew he could easily beat up. He was scared of Capablanca and avoided him as long as he could, until they played in 1921 and the latter finally brought him down.

A lot of people like to say those old-timey chess players would be a joke today. But maybe not. The modern rules of chess have existed since the 16th century, so we can suppose a lot of familiar strategies have always been used, but not many game scores from the pre-20th century have survived.

Don't get me wrong; I'm fond of the bishop.

But objectively, there's a reason the rook is worth 5 points. It's a terrifyingly strong piece in capable hands.

To be honest, the last major development in chess strategy was the hypermodern school in the interwar period, by the 1930s, most elite players were using openings and systems that would look entirely normal today. Actually, the earliest instances of hypermodern play was in the Bannerjee-Cochrane matches in the 1850s, so hypermodern systems might have gotten established sooner except for Morphy. He held back the development of chess for some decades.

Although it's interesting to note that since 2000, those elaborate hypermodern chess systems have become less common and current elite players like Carlsen and Caruana seem to prefer classical openings like the Queen's Gambit and Berlin Defense.

Computer analysis came along at the right time during the 80s period when a large number of game scores were being published, especially in the communist bloc countries which had state-sponsored chess programs. So a huge number of games got played, and I believe it was Karpov who said trying to analyze 6000 games a year by hand was impossible.

Anderssen played Steinitz who played Lasker who played Capablanca who played Alekhine who played Euwe who played Botvinnik who played Smyslov who played Tal who played Petrosian who played Spassky who played Fischer. Fischer didn't play Karpov, but Spassky played Karpov who played Kasparov who played Kramnik who played Anand who played Carlsen.

Fascinating to contemplate.

Euwe, Smyslov, and Petrosian are the three world champs that nobody remembers.

Euwe may just have been a fluke, but the other two were god-level players. I think maybe Petrosian isn't popular because his pawn fortress games are too hard for most people to appreciate. A similar problem might affect Lasker, his style of play was also very non-intuitive and hard to grasp.

Kasparov...it's funny to hear him talk about Fischer because he alternates between praising him and insulting him and calling him an overrated /pol/tard idiot.

I think the problem is that he admires Fischer, but knows that he was a rival for the title of greatest chess player in history, despite the fact that the two never played each other.

Stop trying to rate pieces, can't you see the bigger picture? In chess some pieces are objectively better than others. Some start at the top of life, others at the bottom. The lowest are pawns, who are quite literally pawns to be sacrificed for the interests of the upper class. The king, though the least capable, rules over all. The queen, bishops and knights are privileged from birth or ex officio.

Compare checkers, where all pieces are equal and the only way to gain an advantage over others is to be "kinged" by your own achievement, to seize the crown from the gutter and become first among equals.

Checkers is chess for republicans! By playing chess you're perpetuating a system of oppression and classism.

But the lowly pawn may become a queen if he survives to reach the end of the board.

They're also not as brutal to play as queen endings.

Short peasant dude becomes a tall, beautiful, powerful woman. Chess is a game about living the dream.

I think it was bull how Lasker could go literally years without playing a serious game, then when he was bored or needed money jump back into tournaments and completely dominate. His last hurrah was when he won the 1935 Moscow tournament at the age of 66.

He was just that good I guess.

Lasker just aged well, even though he only lived to 74 which isn't that remarkable.

If you think about it, the pawns are basically just traps. When they get to the "other side" they became the queen

The chess masters who aged well tended to be the guys who were disciplined and kept working at their craft, for example Smyslov was a top 10 player until 1985, when he was 64, and in the top 20 until he was 70 years old. During that time, he was training young players, analyzing/notating games, and exploring new King's Indian Defense variations.

Karpov, now he definitely started to drop off around the turn of the millenium as he was pushing 50. He didn't really keep up with current chess trends that well and he didn't adopt computer analysis. But then again he was also into other things by that point, including politics, so he probably didn't care about chess all that much anymore.

Steinitz, the first "modern" chess player, lost his World Champion title to Lasker when he was in his late 50s. Chess grandmasters dedicated to their craft last a long time.

We covered that above, it was pre-modern era. Steinitz was considered the first world champion since winning the 1873 Vienna tournament, but no actual WC match was held until 1888. Those early WC matches were pretty shit-quality and the defending champion also got to choose his opponent. So Lasker beats Steinitz and takes the crown in 1894, then three years later invites him back for a rematch, which of course was only going to end one way.

As I said, Lasker held onto his title for 27 years because he picked shitty opponents like David Janowski that he knew he could beat. Note that after the slugfest with Schlecter in 1908, Lasker didn't offer to play him again because he was too scared. He avoided Capablanca as long as he could.

Jacques Mieses was maybe the most hardly of them all, his professional chess career lasted 64 years and he contested the 1946 Hastings tournament at 80. He only won a single game, but got a brilliancy prize for it due to a tactical combination that won him the game. He was a contemporary of Lasker, Tarrasch, and Janowski, but long outlasted all of them.

Mieses was a Romantic-style guy, he loved his gambit openings which is probably why he never came close to the level of Lasker or Tarrasch.

Kasparov and Fischer both retired early and still at the top of their game so that adds to their legend.

He was going to play Akiba Rubinstein for the world championship in the fall of 1914 and that didn't work out due to, um, international events.

I want to get into chess

Where do I start? What do I watch? What do I read?

Thanks in advance.

The king, for without it who will lead?

Games Workshop dun goofed again
I bet Kelly is behind this

The piece that is your friend that you believe in.

>The modern rules of chess have existed since the 16th century,

Maybe it's time for a new rule set? Shake things up a bit, see what the experts do when they don't have centuries of play to analyze and refine?

I'd never heard of them either user

Wait, real chess actually has this rule? I thought that was something made up for casual play.

I'd heard of them, but scoffed. Then I did research on other versions of chess that predate modern chess. Now I'm interested but there's too much information to easily digest.

It is called 'the duke'. Blows chess out of the water.

You can download and play Chess 2 on steam. No, really.