Learn Chess
Chess Bishop Moves and Strategy (Complete Guide)
Here's our full guide to the bishop in chess. If you're new to the game and looking for clear answers about this piece, you're in the right place.
In this guide you will find
- how the bishop moves
- how to use it strategically
- checkmates you can deliver with a bishop
- how to checkmate a lone King with two bishops
How Does the Bishop Move in Chess?
Let's start by going over the rules that apply to the bishop.
Bishop Movement
The bishop moves diagonally, as many squares as it wants.
That makes the bishop a long-range piece that can cross the whole board in a single move.
At the start of the game, each player has two bishops, one that stays on light squares and one that stays on dark squares, like this.
The White bishop on c1 will spend the entire game on dark squares. The White bishop on f1 will always stay on light squares. They can never meet. Together, they form what's called the bishop pair.
Note that a bishop only follows a single diagonal during a move. It can't bounce off the edge of the board and switch direction.
Where the Bishop Starts
The starting setup of the pieces is not much of a mystery. The rooks go in the corners of the board. Next to them, on the back rank, come the knights, then the bishops. The royal couple sits in the middle, and the pawns line up on the second rank. Here's what that looks like.
To remember where the King and Queen go, use this simple rule. Each Queen starts on a square of her own color, the White Queen on a light square and the Black Queen on a dark square.
Capturing with a Bishop
To capture an enemy pawn or piece, the bishop simply lands on that piece's square and removes it from the board. Look at the bishop in the diagram below.
It's attacking the pawn on e6. To capture it, the bishop moves onto the e6 square and takes the pawn's place.
And that's it.
Two Simple Games to Practice Bishop Moves
To sharpen your feel for how the bishop moves, here are two small games. First, place a black pawn and a white bishop on a board and find the best path for the bishop to capture the pawn.
Here the bishop has to pass through e5 to reach and capture the pawn on g3. Just make sure you place the bishop and the pawn on squares of the same color, otherwise the capture is impossible.
You can make the game harder by adding two or even three black pawns and looking for the shortest path to capture them all.
The second game is a bishop battle. Set up the bishops and pawns in their starting positions.
White moves first, and both sides take turns. The first player to push a pawn all the way to the far end of the board, or to capture every one of the opponent's pawns, wins. For a refresher on how pawns move, see our guide to the chess pawn.
The Value of a Bishop
Like the knight, a bishop is worth roughly 3 pawns. Bishops and knights together are known as the minor pieces. The Queen and the rooks are the major, or heavy, pieces. The Queen is worth about 9 pawns and a rook about 5. Two minor pieces are therefore stronger than a single rook, and three minor pieces are worth roughly as much as a Queen.
Bishop Strategy
Every piece on the board moves differently, which means every piece calls for a different strategy. Here's what makes the bishop unique.
A Long-Range Piece
The bishop can influence the entire board at once. Take a look at the bishop in the position below.
Sitting on a8, it manages to stop all three black pawns clustered at the far end of the board. That gives us our first principle. Bishops love open positions, meaning positions with plenty of open files, ranks, and diagonals.
The Fianchetto
To get the most out of a bishop, it's very common to develop it in a fianchetto. That means pushing the b-pawn or the g-pawn one square so the bishop can settle behind it.
Here, the White bishop on b2 has been fianchettoed. The pawn on b2 moved to b3 to clear the way for the bishop. You can see how a bishop in a fianchetto dominates one of the long diagonals of the board.
Several openings are built around developing a bishop this way. The most famous examples are the Sicilian Defense's Dragon variation and the King's Indian.
The Bishop Pair
Because the two bishops each control different squares, they complement each other perfectly. The strong early 20th-century player David Janowski showed that a well-placed bishop pair can be extremely hard for an opponent to handle.
In this position from the Danish Gambit, White's bishop pair is extremely threatening. For a deeper look at this idea, see our guide to the bishop pair.
Good Bishop, Bad Bishop
We've talked about how strong bishops are in open positions, but sometimes the position is closed instead. When that happens, the pawn structure decides which bishop is good and which is bad.
Here the position is closed. Few files, ranks, or diagonals are open for the bishops. The locked pawns form a chain, White's running through d4 and e5, Black's through e6 and d5, and these locked pawns decide which bishop is good and which is bad.
The good bishop is the one that can attack the opponent's locked pawns, while the bad bishop is the one boxed in by its own pawns. That makes White's good bishop the one on f1, and Black's good bishop the one on f8. The goal, then, is to trade off your bad bishop while holding on to your good one.
This idea is part of the 5 core strategic principles every player should know.
The Double Attack
To close things out, the bishop has a favorite tactic. It's called the double attack. A tactic is a quick sequence, played over just a few moves, that wins material or delivers checkmate. Don't confuse it with strategy, which is a longer-term plan for improving your position and outplaying your opponent.
The idea behind a double attack is simple. You attack two pieces at the same time, and whichever one moves, you capture the other.
Here, the White bishop is forking both black rooks. Black is going to lose one of them to the bishop no matter what. This shows just how well suited the bishop is to pulling off a double attack.
Checkmating with a Bishop
Time for some exercises. Remember, when you attack the opponent's King, you put it in check. And when the King has no way to get out of check, that's checkmate and the game is over.
Now it's your turn to find some checkmates.
Exercise 1
White to move, mate in one.
You're playing White, and you need to find the move that mates the black King.
#### Solution
The black King has very few escape squares. Its only flight square is g7. So you need to attack the King while also covering g7. The right move is 1.Bd4+!
Now for a slightly trickier exercise.
Exercise 2
White to move, mate in one.
#### Solution
Same idea here, but this time White has two candidate moves to attack the black King, Bc3+ and Bc7+. Only one of them mates.
The method stays the same. Check the black King's escape squares. It only has one, b6. So you need to attack the King while covering b6. The right move is 1.Bc7+!
Exercise 3
White to move, mate in one, and this one is tougher.
#### Solution
The white bishop looks a long way from attacking the black King. At first glance you'd have to march it through g4, c8, and b7 to give check. But there's a famous chess tactic at play here, the discovered check. The White King moves out of the way and unleashes the bishop's check on the black King.
Let's use our method again. What are the black King's escape squares? Once again there's only one, b8. The right move is 1.Kc7+!!
The black King is in check and has nowhere to go. That's mate.
The Elementary Checkmate with King and Two Bishops
Now let's learn how to checkmate a bare King using two bishops.
This mate is one of the elementary checkmates every player needs to know to finish games with confidence.
Chess Bishop FAQ
How does the bishop move in chess?
The bishop moves diagonally, in a straight line, for as many open squares as it wants. Chess bishop moves are always confined to one color of square for the whole game, so a bishop that starts on a light square stays on light squares forever.
What is a bishop worth in chess?
A bishop is generally valued at about 3 pawns, the same as a knight. Bishops and knights make up the minor pieces, while the Queen and rooks are the major pieces.
What is the bishop pair?
The bishop pair is the pair formed by your two bishops, one on light squares and one on dark squares. Because they cover different colors, the two bishops complement each other and can become a real asset, especially in open positions.
Your Move
- Study the chess knight and how it moves.
- Discover our complete guide on how to play chess.
- Learn the chess opening principles.
That's it for our guide to the bishop in chess. We hope it helps you put your bishops to good use.