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I'm new to western chess and am still learning the rules and how the pieces perform.

What is generally considered the best chess piece?

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    If you lose the king, you lose the game, so that's better to keep it, whereas the queen is the most powerful piece. That being said, I don't think so simple rules questions are really on-topic here, I'm afraid. Dec 13, 2012 at 23:41
  • The one that delivers mate.
    – Tony Ennis
    Dec 14, 2012 at 1:04
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    Hi Shogi Gun, welcome to the site. I closed this question because it doesn't really fit the site. Questions that can be found via google aren't really on topic. As you learn more of the rules, however, feel free to ask other questions that you can't figure out quickly with google!
    – Andrew
    Dec 14, 2012 at 8:20
  • The best piece is the one that checkmates your opponent's king. Apr 15, 2014 at 15:05
  • The word "best" in the question should I think be interpreted as "most valuable", so the question is really about the values of the western chess pieces. Wikipedia has a list of different valuations.
    – hkBst
    May 22, 2016 at 8:15

2 Answers 2

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The queen has the most squares available to land on, I recommend you get well acquainted with the rules of the game in the official FIDE Handbook

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    On an empty board, or a knight may well have more squares, in the beginning position, for instance. Dec 13, 2012 at 23:45
  • False. Black bear.
    – Michael
    Jul 17, 2019 at 0:04
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This question is subjective as the "best" piece depends on many factors such as how active a piece is.

The most important piece is your King.

In most cases, the Queen is the most powerful.

As an example, a knight might be more powerful than a Queen, possibly in a position where you are going to promote your pawn, promoting to a Queen might end in stalemate, whereas, promoting to a Knight, would end in checkmate.

I urge you to do a search on Chess Rules or something similar like Beginner Chess and you'll find countless material.

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