The Bishop

The runner moves and strikes exclusively along the diagonal, without jumping over intervening parts.

The symbol of the bishop is often the mitre, a liturgical head covering of bishops. This gave rise to the English name of the chess piece bishop. Thus, the bishop is not called a bishop in every language.

Thus in Italian he is the alfiere, i.e. flag bearer, and in French the fou, i.e. fool. In the chess of the Indians, Persians and Arabs our bishop did not yet exist in its present form: in its place there was the figure of the alfil or fil - Arabic and Persian name for elephant.

With the introduction of the game in Europe, the bishop was then reinterpreted: the French interpreted it as a jester's cap - the French term fou, the fool, for the bishop is probably a distortion of the Persian fil. In Great Britain and some other areas of Europe, however, it became just early the form of a mitre, or bishop.

When the Alfil was transformed into a bishop in the course of the game reform at the end of the 15th century, the courier probably served as an inspiration. It is obvious that the German term Läufer probably goes back to the Kurier.

Interestingly, bishops can never change their field color. Depending on the color of the square on which a bishop is placed, it is said that this bishop is white-fielded or black-fielded.

This means a restriction of its move possibilities and thus a weakness of the bishop. Mainly for this reason the bishop is considered weaker than the rook. Both bishops work well together when they are on adjacent diagonals - thus a lot of squares can be controlled!

So this is how the bishop moves: The bishop moves only along the diagonals. It can move forward or backward along a diagonal as far as it likes until it hits an edge or another piece, which it either hits or is blocked by.

If there is a friendly piece on the diagonal, the bishop cannot move to that square or beyond. If there is an enemy piece along a diagonal, the bishop cannot move beyond it either. However, it can move to the square occupied by the enemy piece and capture the piece.

The bishop can always move only on the same squares of its color on which it started.

Overall, the bishop is an interesting piece and is about as strong as the knight (maybe even a bit stronger), but not quite as strong as the rook – which you can look at next.

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