The Bishop

Bishops move diagonally!

If a rook is like a queen that can only move horizontally or vertically, then a bishop is like a queen that can only move diagonally!

So, you can move a bishop diagonally along in a straight line in any direction, and for as many squares as you like, as long as the traversed squares are all empty and until the side of the board is reached

If you look at the chessboard, you will notice that all the squares along any diagonal are always the same color, so that a bishop cannot possibly move from a dark square to a light square, nor from a light square to a dark square. In other words, a bishop on a light square always operates only on the light squares, and a bishop on a dark square only operates on the dark squares.

For this reason, a bishop is not as powerful as a rook, as a rook can cover all 64 squares of the chessboard, whereas a bishop can only cover half the chessboard or 32 squares, either the light squares or the dark squares.

Whereas you learn earlier that you do not usually move your rooks until the later stages of the game, this is not so true for the bishops. You will see later that the diagonals tend to open up earlier that the ranks and files, and for this reason it is usually easier to move the bishops early in the game.

Capturing using a bishop

Again, bishops capture in the same way as the king, queen and rook. You can capture an enemy piece if you can move a bishop to the square containing the enemy piece, in which case you remove the enemy piece from the board and replace it with your bishop.

Next lesson

In the next lesson, your will learn about the knight, which is the only piece that can jump over the other pieces!