Did you know that Bobby Fischer’s favorite piece was the king side bishop? Well, at least it is according to Grand Master Mihail Marin in his book, “Learn From the Legends: Chess Champions at Their Best”. On numerous occasions, Mr. Fischer will hold onto his king’s bishop until the very end of the game, using it as a lance to pierce his enemies from afar.
In a notable game with Mark Taimanov in 1971, Mr. Fischer gave up his king’s bishop in exchange for a pawn, which ultimately won him the game, as Mr. Taimanov had to move his last remaining command piece, a knight, too far away to capture it, and was unable to recover in time to fend off Mr. Fischer’s pawns. Looks like I could use some bishop 101, because it would have taken me a long time to figure out that trade working in my favor!
Again, as with our other pieces, moving the bishop on our logical board is a simple set of algebraic rules. Essentially, moving the bishop is: current bishop position +/- 7 or +/- 9 = new bishop’s position. Just like we saw for the rook, though, it does matter what row and column you are on. We can’t have a bishop go right off of the board at column 8, only to return a row up on column 1! Fortunately, as we had already solved this math problem for the rook, adding it to the bishop was easy.
You can check out the code on the bishop commit.
Linux – keep it simple.