How many squares can a queen attack?

Twenty-seven from d4 or any other central square, twenty-one from a corner like a1. On an empty board she always covers at least twenty-one squares, which is more than a third of the board. A rook covers fourteen wherever it stands, and a bishop between seven and thirteen depending on where you put it.

Can the queen move like a knight?

No. She has the rook's move and the bishop's move and nothing else. The L-shaped jump belongs to the knight alone, and it is the one thing a queen cannot copy. That is why a knight can attack a queen without the queen attacking it back, and why a knight fork against king and queen wins material so often.

When should you bring the queen out?

When she has a square that a pawn or a knight cannot hit, and usually after your knights and bishops are already developed. Early queen sorties look terrifying and cost time: every pawn or minor piece that attacks her gains a free move of development while she runs, and the attacking side ends up behind.

How does the queen move in chess?

Twenty-seven. That is how many squares a queen on d4 attacks on an empty board: seven along the fourth rank, seven up and down the d-file, seven on the long diagonal from a1 to h8, and six more on a7 to g1. A rook has fourteen from anywhere. A knight in the centre has eight. This is the whole reason the queen is the piece everybody wants back when they promote a pawn.

Queen on d4. She sees the whole fourth rank, the whole d-file and both diagonals through the square: twenty-seven squares in all.

A rook and a bishop welded together

Any number of squares in a straight line, in any of the eight directions, and she captures by landing on the square like everybody except the pawn. That is exactly a rook’s move plus a bishop’s move, and the piece values follow: a rook is worth about five pawns, a bishop about three, a queen about nine.

What she cannot do matters just as much. She cannot jump. A queen on d1 with her own pawn on d2 has nothing whatsoever on the d-file, and neither an enemy piece nor a friendly one can be hopped over (no piece can, except the knight). And she has no L in her: the knight’s move is the one thing she cannot copy, which is why a knight can attack her while she attacks it back with nothing.

Count her moves in the starting position and the answer is none at all. The queen on d1 is boxed in by c1, c2, d2, e1 and e2, every one of them her own. Play 1.e4 and she suddenly has e2, f3, g4 and h5, four squares that did not exist a second earlier. Half of what an opening move does is open lines for the pieces behind it.

Why she should not come out on move three

Every beginner finds this in their first week. 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 and the queen is eyeing f7, the one square in the black camp that only the king defends. If Black develops naturally with 3…Nf6, it is already over.

Scholar's mate from the starting position: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 Nf6 4.Qxf7 mate. The queen takes on f7 protected by the bishop on c4, and the black king on e8 has no square.

Four moves. Nobody who has been hit by it once forgets it. There is a page on Scholar’s mate and another on how to defend against it, because the defence is one move.

That move is 3…g6, hitting the queen. She retreats to f3, still staring at f7, and 4…Nf6 defends the square a second time and develops a piece. Look at what White has to show for it.

After 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 g6 4.Qf3 Nf6. White has moved the queen twice and developed one piece; Black has two knights out and the queen now blocks White's own knight from f3.

Two of White’s four moves have been queen moves, and she now sits on the square the g1 knight wants. Black is doing fine. This is the pattern behind the advice you keep hearing: knights and bishops first, queen later. Every pawn or minor piece that attacks her hands the defender a free move of development while she runs, and free moves in the opening are the whole currency.

Nine pawns is a lot to leave hanging

On the scale everyone learns first she is nine, a rook is five, a bishop or a knight three, a pawn one. Queen for rook and bishop is roughly even, queen for two rooks is roughly even, and queen for a knight is a disaster nobody needs a calculator to spot. Which makes her a terrible defender. Anything she guards can be attacked by a knight or a pawn, and then she has to move or hand over nine points for three.

It also means one careless queen move ends more club games than any opening ever will. The most common single reason my students lose is a hung queen, and there is a whole post on how to stop blundering that is mostly about the habit that fixes it.

The flip side is that she wins games on her own. King and queen against a lone king is mate in ten moves at most from any position, and it is the first ending worth learning: see king and queen vs king. No other single piece can do that. A rook needs longer, a bishop or a knight cannot do it at all.

The habit to build

When you are wondering whether a queen move is safe, do not look at where she is going. Look at every enemy knight and ask which squares it reaches in one hop, then look at every pawn and ask which squares it could hit with one push. If her new square survives both questions, play it. If it does not, you have just saved nine pawns, and you can spend the move developing a bishop instead.

And one thing about trading her. When you are worse, keep the queens on: she is the piece that generates counterplay out of a position that has none. When you are a piece up, trade them off at the first opportunity. Nothing rescues a lost game more often than an enemy queen still wandering about.