The knight (♘, ♞) is a piece in the game of chess, represented by a horse's head and neck.
Each player starts the game with two knights on the b- and g-files, each located between a rook and a bishop.
[a][b][4] Knights capture in the same way, replacing the enemy piece on the square and removing it from the board.
[6] Knights and bishops are stronger when supported by other pieces (such as pawns) to create outposts and become more powerful when they advance, as long as they remain active.
[4] Generally, knights are strongest in the center of the board, where they have up to eight moves, and weakest in a corner, where they have only two.
Furthermore, knights have the advantage of being able to control squares of either color, unlike a lone bishop.
Nonetheless, a disadvantage of the knight (compared to the other pieces) is that by itself it cannot lose a move to put the opponent in zugzwang (see triangulation and tempo), while a bishop can.
Pawnless endgames are a rarity, and if the stronger side has even a single pawn, an extra knight should give them an easy win.
In algebraic notation, the usual modern way of recording chess games, the letter N stands for the knight (K is reserved for the king); in descriptive chess notation, Kt is sometimes used instead, mainly in older literature.
The ma of xiangqi and janggi is slightly more restricted; conceptually, the piece is considered to pass through the adjacent orthogonal point, which must be unoccupied, rather than "jumping".
The knight is colloquially sometimes referred to as a "horse", which is also the translation of the piece's name in several languages: Spanish caballo, Italian cavallo, Russian конь, etc.
Some languages refer to it as the "jumper", reflecting the knight's ability to move over pieces in its path: Polish skoczek, Danish/Norwegian springer, Swedish springare, German Springer, Luxembourgish Sprénger, Slovene skakač.