The Bishop is better than the Knight in a game of chess

Now to start the debate: The following is the most common assignment of point values for chess pieces: [1] •Pawn = 1 •Knight = 3 •Bishop = 3 •Rook = 5 •Queen = 9 Overall bishops and knights are worth about the same but I will argue that the Bishop will be more powerful to the player than the Knight due to the following facts: Range: Firstly, the Bishop is a long-range piece, while the Knight is clearly a short-range weapon. Therefore, when there is plenty of open space on the board, the Bishop normally outperforms the Knight. As a chess game progresses, pawns tend to get traded, removing support points from the knight and opening up lines for the bishop. This generally leads to the bishop's advantage increasing over time. [2] Open vs. Closed Positions: The bishop is better than the knight in open positions. The long-range power of a bishop shows itself best when no pawns block its diagonals. In this way a bishop can sweep from one end to the board to another quite easily. I will concede that the Knight is better in closed positions (due to the fact that I can jump over other pieces) but still in chess closed positions are a lot rarer than open positions. [2] Therefore the bishop will be more useful to the player than the Knight when it comes to positions. End game: Bishops generally gain in relative strength towards the endgame as more pieces are captured and more open lines are available for them to operate. When the board is empty, a bishop can influence both wings simultaneously, whereas a knight would need a few moves to do so. In an open endgame, a pair of bishops is decidedly superior to both a bishop and a knight, or two knights. A player possessing a pair of bishops has a strategic weapon in the form of a long-term threat to trade down to an advantageous endgame. [3] Therefore bishops are more powerful to the player in the End game. Professional valuing: From the values above you can see that the Queen is worth 9 points and the pawn is worth 1 point. This tells us that the Queen is more important than a pawn. The Bishops and Knights are worth 3 points but it is generally considered that the Bishops are worth slightly more than the Knights. Many professional chess players have valued the bishop to be more valuable than the Knight. The following points show how Professional chess players value the different chess pieces: [4] •Sarratt: Knight = 3.1, Bishop = 3.3 •Philidor: Knight = 3.05, Bishop = 3.5 •Peter Pratt: Knight = 3, Bishop = 3 •Bilguer: Knight = 3.5, Bishop = 3.5 •Lasker: Knight = 3, Bishop = 3 •Euwe: Knight = 3ï¿½, Bishop = 3ï¿½ •Lasker: Knight = 3ï¿½, Bishop = 3ï¿½ •Horowitz: Knight = 3, Bishop = 3+ •Evans: Knight = 3ï¿½, Bishop = 3ï¿½+ •Fischer: Knight = 3, Bishop = 3ï¿½ •Kaufman: Knight = 3ï¿½, Bishop = 3ï¿½ •Berliner: Knight = 3.2, Bishop = 3.33 •Yevgeny Gik: Knight = 2.4, Bishop = 4 Overall out of the Professional chess players I have listed it appears that 7 of them consider the bishop to be of more value than the Knight, the rest valued the bishop and the knight to be equal whereas none of them valued the Knight is to be more valuable. [4] So it is clear that in this case even professional chess players consider the Bishop to be better than the Knight for a player in a game of chess. I end Round 2 here. .. Sources: [1] . http://www.chesscorner.com... [2] . http://www.chess.com... [3] . http://www.chess-poster.com... [4] . http://en.wikipedia.org...