Chess Queen

[Liisa Komara]

Thepredecessor to the queen is the ferz, a weak piece only able to move or capture one step diagonally, originating from the Persian game of shatranj. The modern queen gained its power and its modern move in Spain in the 15th century.

The queen can be moved any number of unoccupied squares in a straight line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, thus combining the moves of the rook and bishop. The queen captures by moving to the square on which an enemy piece stands.

Although both players start with one queen each, a pawn can be promoted to any of several types of pieces, including a queen, when the pawn is moved to the player's furthest rank (the opponent's first rank). Such a queen created by promotion can be an additional queen or, if the player's queen has been captured, a replacement queen. The queen is by far the most common piece type a pawn is promoted to due to the relative power of a queen; promotion to a queen is colloquially called queening.

The queen is typically worth about nine pawns, which is slightly stronger than a rook and a bishop together, but slightly weaker than two rooks, though there are exceptions. It is almost always disadvantageous to exchange the queen for a single piece other than the enemy's queen.

The reason that the queen is stronger than a combination of a rook and bishop, even though they control the same number of squares, is twofold. First, the queen is more mobile than the rook and the bishop, as the entire power of the queen can be transferred to another location in one move, while transferring the entire firepower of a rook and bishop requires two moves, the bishop always being restricted to squares of one color. Second, unlike the bishop, the queen is not hampered by an inability to control squares of the opposite color to the square on which it stands. A factor in favor of the rook and bishop together is that they can attack (or defend) a square twice, while a queen can only do so once. However, experience has shown that this factor is usually less significant than the points favoring the queen.[1]

The queen is strongest when the board is open, the enemy king is poorly defended, or there are loose (i.e. undefended) pieces in the enemy camp. Because of its long range and ability to move in multiple directions, the queen is well-equipped to execute forks. Compared to other long range pieces (i.e. rooks and bishops), the queen is less restricted and stronger in closed positions.

A player should generally delay developing the queen, as developing it too quickly can expose it to attacks by enemy pieces, causing the player to lose time removing the queen from danger. Despite this, beginners often develop the queen early in the game, hoping to plunder the enemy position and deliver an early checkmate, such as the scholar's mate.

Early queen attacks are rare in high-level chess, but there are some openings with early queen development that are used by high-level players. For example, the Scandinavian Defense (1.e4 d5), which often features queen moves by Black on the second and third moves, is considered sound and has been played at the world championship level. Some less common examples have also been observed in high-level games. The Danvers Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Qh5), which is widely characterized as a beginner's opening, has occasionally been played by the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.[2]

A queen exchange often marks the beginning of the endgame, but there are queen endgames, and sometimes queens are exchanged in the opening, long before the endgame. A common goal in the endgame is to promote a pawn to a queen. As the queen has the largest range and mobility, queen and king vs. lone king is an easy win when compared to some other basic mates. Queen and king vs. rook and king is also a win for the player with the queen, but it is not easy.

The fers changed into the queen over time. The first surviving mention of this piece as a queen or similar is the Latin regina in the Einsiedeln Poem, a 98-line Medieval Latin poem written around 997 and preserved in a monastery at Einsiedeln in Switzerland. Some surviving early medieval pieces depict the piece as a queen. The word fers became grammatically feminized in several languages, such as alferza in Spanish and fierce or fierge in French.[3] The Carmina Burana also refer to the queen as femina (woman) and coniunx (spouse),[4] and the name Amazon has sometimes been seen.[5]

During the great chess reform at the end of the 15th century, Catholic nations kept using an equivalent of Latin domina ("lady"), such as dama in Spanish, donna in Italy, and dame in France, all of which evoke "Our Lady". However, Protestant nations such as Germany and England refused any derivatives of domina as it might have suggested some cult of the Virgin Mary and instead opted for secular terms such as Knigin in German and "queen" in English.[6]

Historian Marilyn Yalom proposes several factors that might have been partly responsible for influencing the piece towards its identity as a queen and its power in modern chess: the prominence of medieval queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche of Castile, and more particularly Isabella I of Castile; the cult of the Virgin Mary;[4] the power ascribed to women in the troubadour tradition of courtly love; and the medieval popularity of chess as a game particularly suitable for women to play on equal terms with men.[9] She points to medieval poetry depicting the Virgin as the chess-queen of God or Fierce Dieu.[10]

Significantly, the earliest surviving treatise to describe the modern movement of the queen (as well as the bishop and pawn), Repeticin de amores e arte de axedres con CL iuegos de partido (Discourses on Love and the Art of Chess with 150 Problems) by Luis Ramrez de Lucena, was published during the reign of Isabella I of Castile.[11] Even before that, the Valencian poem Scachs d'amor ("Chess of Love") depicted a chess game between Francesc de Castellv and Narcs de Vinyoles[12] and commented on by Bernat Fenollar, which clearly had the modern moves of the queen and the bishop. Well before the queen's powers expanded, it was already being romantically described as essential to the king's survival, so that when the queen was lost, there was nothing more of value on the board.[13]

At various times, the ability of pawns to be queened was restricted while the original queen was still on the board, so as not to cause scandal by providing the king with more than one queen. An early 12th-century Latin poem refers to a queened pawn as a ferzia, as opposed to the original queen or regina, to account for this.[17]

When the queen was attacked, it was customary to warn the opponent by announcing "gardez la reine" or simply "gardez", similar to the announcement of "check". Some published rules even required this announcement before the queen could be legally captured. This custom was largely abandoned in the 19th century.[18]

In Russia, for a long time, the queen could also move like a knight; some players disapproved of this ability to "gallop like the horse" (knight).[19][20] The book A History of Chess by H.J.R. Murray,[21] says that William Coxe, who was in Russia in 1772, saw chess played with the queen also moving like a knight. Such an augmented queen piece is now known as the fairy chess piece amazon.

Around 1230, the queen was also independently invented as a piece in Japan, where it formed part of the game of dai shogi. The piece was retained in the smaller and more popular chu shogi, but does not form a part of modern shogi.

Her power is amazing! She's worth nine pawns; she's majestic, extremely agile and has seemingly unlimited powers. Then, however, comes the big disappointment: It's actually unwise to move the queen early in a chess game.

Don't move the queen too early! Develop your knights and bishops first, occupy the center, bring the king into safety, and only then start thinking about your queen. This is what everyone learns.

Over the years, I've come to realize that this general rule, while useful for beginners, is mostly rubbish. The truth is that most players, even strong ones, don't know how to handle early queen-sorties at all, especially in blitz and rapid games. They don't know how to deal with it, they sometimes don't even take it into account!

As White, I've used the Center Game (1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Qxd4) as a dangerous weapon in which Black often had no clue how to handle White's aggressive queen. I've had the following sequence of moves probably hundreds of times in blitz games:

(Interestingly, in the recent World Cup tournament, Evgeny Najer tried 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d4 exd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Qd3!? in one of his tiebreak games against Anish Giri, the world number-four. Unfortunately, he lost.)

Examples like the one above happen, in fact, quite regularly. You move your queen out early, your opponent wants to "punish" you for it, and thinks he is justified in doing so. After all, only amateurs move their queen early in the game! However, he forgets that chess is still a game of tactics, and that the queen is a powerful tactical piece!

The reason why this trick occurs so often is that Black apparently has done nothing wrong. He's just developed his knights and White has failed to protect his center pawn. How could it be wrong to just capture it?

The concept of moving your queen early (even when it doesn't immediately win material) is, of course, fairly uncontroversial in traditional openings such as the Scandinavian and the King's Gambit. A standard line like 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Qh4+ comes to mind, where Black immediately forces White to give up the right to castle, although the queen often gets chased away at great expense later on, as in the famous Immortal Game, Anderssen-Kieseritzky, London 1851.

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