Bishop (chess)
This means bishops are approximately equal in strength to knights, but depending on the game situation, either may have a distinct advantage.
[2] Bishops usually gain in relative strength towards the endgame as more pieces are captured and more open lines become available on which they can operate.
A player possessing a pair of bishops has a strategic weapon in the form of a long-term threat to trade down to an advantageous endgame.
On the other hand, in the opening and middlegame a bishop may be hemmed in by pawns of both players, and thus be inferior to a knight which can jump over them.
Furthermore, on a crowded board a knight has many tactical opportunities to fork two enemy pieces.
A fianchettoed bishop should generally not be given up lightly, since the resulting holes in the pawn formation may prove to be serious weaknesses, particularly if the king has castled on that side of the board.
There are nonetheless some modern opening lines where a fianchettoed bishop is given up for a knight in order to double the opponent's pawns, for example 1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.Nc3 c5 4.d5 Bxc3+!?
The players tend to gain control of squares of opposite colors, and a deadlock results.
The position from Wolf versus Leonhardt (see diagram) shows an important defensive setup.
[7] If two pawns are connected, they normally win if they reach their sixth rank, otherwise the game may be a draw (as above).
The bishop's predecessor in medieval chess, shatranj (originally chaturanga), was the alfil, meaning "elephant", which could leap two squares along any diagonal, and could jump over an intervening piece.
[11] A piece with this move, called a cocatriz or crocodile, is part of the Grande Acedrex in the Libro de los juegos compiled in 1283 for King Alfonso X of Castile.
[12] About half a century later Muḥammad ibn Maḥmud al-Āmulī, in his Treasury of the Sciences, describes an expanded form of chess with two pieces moving "like the rook but obliquely".
The term "bishop" as applied specifically to the chess piece was first recorded in the 16th century, with the first known written example dating back to the 1560s.
[16] In all other Germanic languages, except for Icelandic, it is called various names, all of which directly translate to English as "runner" or "messenger".
The use of the term in Icelandic predates that of the English language, as the first mentioning of "biskup" in Icelandic texts dates back to the early part of the 14th century, while the 12th-century Lewis Chessmen portray the bishop as an unambiguously ecclesiastical figure.
In the Saga of Earl Mágus, which was written in Iceland somewhere between 1300–1325, it is described how an emperor was checkmated by a bishop.
[20][21][citation needed] The canonical chessmen date back to the Staunton chess set of 1849.
[24] The English apparently chose to call the piece a bishop because the projections at the top resembled a mitre.
[27] In some Slavic languages (e.g. Czech/Slovak) the bishop is called střelec/strelec, which directly translates to English as a "shooter" meaning an archer, while in others it is still known as "elephant" (e.g. Russian slon).
