How the queen moves

The queen is a rook and a bishop in one piece. She reaches twenty seven squares from the middle of an empty board, which is more than three times what a knight manages, and she is still not the most important piece.

Rook plus bishop
27 squares from the centre
Worth about 9

Any number of squares in any straight line: along a rank, along a file, or along a diagonal. She takes the first enemy piece on that line, and she cannot jump over anything, which is her one weakness.

Twenty seven squares at once

A queen on d4 covers twenty seven squares. That is the rook's fourteen and the bishop's thirteen added together, which is exactly what she is.

The arithmetic of what she is worth

A queen is worth about nine pawns, or roughly a rook and a bishop with a pawn on top. She is not worth two rooks, which surprises people: two rooks working together defend each other and cover more ground, and in most endgames the pair beats her.

The one thing she cannot do is be in two places, which is why a queen can be worth less than a well-placed rook and knight in an attack. See piece values for where these numbers come from and where they stop being true.

Twenty one from the corner

In the corner she still covers twenty one squares, so she loses less than a bishop does by being badly placed and far more than a rook, which loses nothing.

Why bringing the queen out early goes wrong

Every beginner discovers that the queen attacks a lot of things, brings her out on move two, and gets a rating point education. The problem is not that early queen moves are illegal or even bad in themselves. It is that she is worth nine and everything your opponent owns is worth less, so any piece that attacks her wins a tempo by doing it, and she has to keep running while your opponent develops for free.

Get the knights and bishops out first, castle, and then find her a square. That is not a rule so much as an accounting fact.

Scholar's mate, and why it stops working

The four move checkmate

The four move mate every beginner meets, aimed at f7, the one square only the black king defends. The engine plays it out and confirms the last move is mate.

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 Nf6 4.Qxf7#

Checkmate. The queen is defended by the bishop on c4, so the king cannot take her, and nothing else can reach f7.

It works exactly once. Black defends by covering f7 or attacking the queen, and every developing move that does either one gains time, because the queen has to move again. Third move g6 or Qe7, or simply Nf6 followed by taking on h5, and White has spent three moves on a piece that has to retreat.

Black to move. A queen and a king in the corner. One move.

Show the answer

30.Kxh2 30...Rh5#

The line ends in checkmate. The position is from a real game on Lichess, rated 424 in their puzzle pool, and it is one of the positions in the Mate in One skill in the trainer.

Questions people ask

Can the queen move like a knight?

No, and this is the commonest wrong assumption in beginner chess. The queen moves like a rook and a bishop combined and nothing else. She cannot jump, she cannot move in an L, and a knight two squares away in the wrong shape is a knight she cannot touch. That is why a knight forking a queen is such an effective tactic.

How many squares can a queen move?

Up to twenty seven at once from a central square on an empty board, twenty one from a corner. In a real position with pieces in the way it is a good deal fewer, because unlike the knight she can be blocked.

Can you have two queens?

Yes. Promote a pawn on the eighth rank and you may choose a queen even though you already have one, and there is no limit written into the rules. Nine queens is theoretically possible. If you have no spare queen, an upside-down rook is the traditional stand-in over the board.

Is the queen the most important piece?

She is the most valuable, but the king is the most important, because losing him ends the game and losing her does not. Plenty of games are won a queen down and none are won a king down.

Queen sits under How the pieces move in the reference. Nearby: