hardest piece to master.

in your opinion what is the hardest chess piece to master? i say it is the pawn.

the pawn is a key piece I agree with this, but it is easy to predect. for me, the queen wich have more squares to move to is the hardest to master with a lot of possible combinations and calculations.

yes i avoid messing with queens in troublesome positions because its too much to calculate.

the king.....its safety.

Queen/Rook combo...

I'd say the Knight, since it is not always so easy to see the routes it can do.. whereas the movement a rook is pretty obvious.

Handling queen, rooks or bishop is just matter of board vision.. for knights, you need Knight Vision 😉

To master a pair of bishops or a pair of knights is a challenge for me.
If my opponent knows how tho handle them is a nightmare.

I would say rooks are most problematic. If I have a choice which rook goes to open file, I always end up moving the rook that doesn't belong there.

I think the knight is the hardest piece for me to master. Although, I can't be sure. 😉

I think the pawn, simply because it's stuck in one way traffic - if you move any other piece to a bad square - chances are you can move it back. However, pawn moves alter the entire game's structure/elasticity, therefore in my opinion - are extremely difficult to master.

Originally posted by torspo
...If I have a choice which rook goes to open file, I always end up moving the rook that doesn't belong there.

that's exactly what yasser seirawan said somewhere. 😀

Originally posted by torspo
I would say rooks are most problematic. If I have a choice which rook goes to open file, I always end up moving the rook that doesn't belong there.

heh, I've done that a number of times. I would say for beginners it's the knight. For me, it's the queen, but it's usually cases where there is a revealed attack leading to a double attack by the queen 1 to 2 moves later.

I would say the pawns. Silman in "How to Reassess Your Chess" says the knight is one of the hardest to master.

For me it is the knight. But then again, I've not mastered any of them!


Knights give me more trouble than any other piece. They seemingly come out of no where and wreak havoc.


I have a tendency to leave my knights on defense, poor decision most of the time, but I really cant work that knight magic many of my opponents seem to create.


Studying up on them now at a site called predator at the chessboard. Excellent site btw...

(This is the most interesting thread I've read in a long time!
The discussion of the pawns, you can't reverse the moves of them, made me think a lot.)