Die Umfrage, wie Spieler ihre Springer auf dem Brett platzieren, hat nun auch internationale Kreise gezogen. Großmeister Alexander Baburin berichtet in seinem täglichen Schach-Newsletter „Chess Today“ (siehe auch www.chesstoday.net) über die Umfrage auf der Homepage der Rochade. Mittlerweile haben mehr als 250 Spieler ihr Votum abgegeben. Die Fraktion, die stur ihre Springer nach vorne stieren lässt, bleibt weiterhin die mit Abstand größte (44 Prozent). Um die Leser von „Chess Today“ an der Abstimmung teilnehmen zu lassen, wird diese nochmals bis zum Wochenende verlängert. (Hartmut Metz)

Directing your knights

Every chess player cares about his knights – but does everybody care how the knights stand on the board? Chess journalist Hartmut Metz had a theory that attacking players placed their knights looking straight forward, while positional players preferred that the knights look at each other or to one side (left or right) of the board – and some place them diagonally (at approximately 45 degrees).

Metz wrote a story on this curious subject for Schachkalender 2013. He observed how some top players positioned their knights during a Bundesliga match of his home town team OSG Baden-Baden, spoke with them about it and checked a lot of old pictures as well. The results seemed to confirm his theory – players like Anand, Nakamura, Ju. Polgar and Shirov placed knights looking straight forward, while players like Carlsen, Leko and Adams preferred that their knights ‘looked’ at each other. The knights of Kramnik, Karpov, Bacrot and Capablanca always looked to the same side of the board – as (surprisingly) did Kasparov’s knights. Of course, there are some players who don’t think much about the issue (e.g. Korchnoi, Fischer, Aronjan, Karjakin and Radjabov. You can vote in the online poll (the text is both in German and English) on www.rochade-kuppenheim.de.

The first 250 votes gave the following results:

• My knights both look in front to the opponent (44%)
• My knights look to each other (19%)
• The knights both look in one direction (left or right) (14 %)
• I place the knights diagonally (at approximately 45 degrees) (7%)
• Both knights look to their wing (left to the queenside, the right to the kingside) (1%)
• I place my knights in other directions (6%)
• I’ve never paid attention to how I place my knights (9%)

ChessToday CT-4458 (pdf)

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