The amazon, also known as the queen+knight compound or the dragon, is a fairy chess piece that can move like a

queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...

or a

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

. It may thus be considered the sum of all orthodox chess pieces other than the

king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

(because it cannot

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

and does not know when it is under threat via the check rule) and the pawn (because it cannot practice

en passant In chess, ''en passant'' (, "in passing") describes the capture by a Pawn (chess), pawn of an enemy pawn on the same and an adjacent that has just made an initial two-square advance. This is a special case in the rules of chess. The capturi ...

). The amazon can force

checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...

on an enemy king without the help of any other friendly piece. Chess moves in this article use ''A'' as notation for the amazon.

Movement

The amazon's movement combines those of the queen and the knight. Thus, it may move to any square on the same rank, file, or diagonal without jumping, or it may move to any of the nearest squares not on the same rank, file, or diagonal.

History

The amazon is one of the most simply described fairy chess pieces and as such has a long history and has gone by many names. It was first used in Turkish Great Chess, a large medieval variant of chess, where it was called the ''giraffe''. Later, it was widely experimented with in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

to replace the slow ferz, and it competed with the modern queen for this role; the modern queen eventually won out, as the amazon's power was deemed excessive. In Russia, the amazon persisted into the 18th century; some players disapproved of this ability to "gallop like the horse" (knight). The book '' A History of Chess'' by H. J. R. Murray, page 384, says that one Mr. Coxe, who was in Russia in 1772, saw chess being played with the amazon. The amazon is best known for its appearance in the chess variant Maharajah and the Sepoys, where it is the ''maharajah''. It is royal and White's only piece.

Value

The amazon's value is estimated to be 12 or 13 points in the chess piece relative value system. It is extremely mobile, can control every square surrounding itself in a 5×5 area, and can force checkmate by itself. In contrast, although the gryphon (or ''griffin'') from Grande Acedrex (which moves one step diagonally before continuing outwards as a rook) would seem to have the value of two rooks (10–11 points), the squares it attacks are more dispersed, and it is more easily defended against than the amazon. In the endgame of king and amazon versus king and empress (rook+knight compound), the amazon usually wins; however, in a few positions, the weaker side may force a draw by setting up a

fortress A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from L ...

. Such a fortress forces the side with the amazon to give perpetual check; otherwise, the side with the empress can force a simplification or give their own perpetual check. King and amazon versus king is a forced win for the side with the amazon;

can be forced within four moves. In comparison, the queen requires 10 moves and the rook requires 16. In fact, the amazon does not even require its king's help to force checkmate (as an example of a checkmate position, the king is in the corner and the attacking amazon is a knight's move away from it), and this great power is the reason why it is not seen as often in chess variants as the princess or empress.

Symbol

Both white and black symbols for the amazon were added to version 12 of the

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

standard in March 2019, in the Chess Symbols block:

Notes

References