The Queen

Your queen is your most powerful piece on the board!

This is because you normally have a much greater choice of squares in which to move your queen compared with all your other pieces, which all have more limited movement. And in chess, the more squares a piece can move to, then the more powerful is that piece!

Just like your king, your queen can move in any one of 8 directions, horizontally, vertically or diagonally. However, whereas your king was limited to moving one square only in any given direction, your queen can continue moving along a straight line in any single direction as long as the traversed squares are all empty and until the side of the board is reached. So you may move your queen from one end of the board all the way to the other end in one turn!

So, with you queen near the center of the board, you may have a choice of up to 7 squares horizontally, up to 7 squares vertically, and up to 13 squares diagonally, to which you can move your queen, a total of 27 squares. This compares with the 8 squares that your king could possibly move to. Even with your queen on a corner square, you still have up to 21 squares to move to, 7 horizontally, 7 vertically and 7 diagonally, which compares favourably with the 3 squares to which you could move your king.

Of course, in practice, there will be other pieces on the board and you will rarely have a full choice of squares to which to move your queen, as some of your other pieces may be blocking her. In fact, just like your king, you cannot move your queen on your first move as she is completely blocked by your other pieces and must wait until you have moved some of these pieces first.

Capturing using a queen

Just like your king, you can capture an enemy piece if you move your queen to any square containing an enemy piece.

In fact, moving and capturing are identical operations for all of your pieces, except your pawns, which, as you will learn later, move and capture using different movements. For all your other pieces, if you move the piece to an empty square, then it is a simple move. However, if the square contains an enemy piece, then it is a capture and you can remove the captured piece from the board and replace it with your own piece.

Next lesson

Next, your will learn about your rook, another powerful piece though not quite as powerful as your queen; fortunately you get two rooks at the start of the game...you only get one queen!