Really?? Never – it’s always got to be +, surely?

I seem to recall there was some tale about the late Tony Miles and a j’adoube war; anyone remember it?

By the way, does anyone know of any "j'adoube" wars?  If I come to the board after my opponent has set up the pieces, I correct my knights.  Have there been any incidents where the players go back and forth, switching the orientations of the knights on the board?  And if one player complained about which way his opponent's knights faced, is there a rule that governs this?

Come to think of it, I DO remember what I used to do when I exchanged one of my knights: It would always point and the line which devides the d and e files.

I point my knights diagonally forward and away from the center and generally keep them that way throughout the match.  I guess this is a conscious effort to be a bit unusual in the opening and a subconscious reflection of my initiation into chess using descriptive notation.  Since descriptive notation required remembering which knight was a King's or Queen's, I didn't bother remembering which was which.  I'd just look which way each was facing.   

I probably did place them facing the opposite direction to what my opponents expected in order to gain some imaginary psychological advantage.  Well, perhaps it wasn't imaginary since the thought would give me confidence.

Ok, I happen to have a lot of books on Capablanca and I looked through the photos to see if he had a "knight orientation" preference.
In almost all of his earlier games, both knights were facing forward (even in simul displays were there are lots of boards setup).  Then around the late 20's they started to go sideways in some pictures and forward in others.  Finally, I found one were one knight is sideways and other is diagonal backwards.  I guess he really let himself go!  Anyway, this is based on just the few photographs I could find were the knights were clear.

As for Kramnik (another personal favorite)  I found more than a dozen  pictures of him playing (from Dortmund, Linares, the Leko Match, Topalov Match, etc) and both knights were facing left in all but one (its worth noting the knight was still on g1 and he might not have "gotten around to it" yet).  Most telling of all, there is a picture of the board before a game in the recent WCC match where the knights are facing away from each other; but in a later photo (taken after the game had started) both knights are facing left.  I think Kramnk might be a "lefty".

I leave it up to other people to check out other great players and their knights....

Interesting poll! I use to put the knight´s in the starting square both looking away from each other (right and left) and during the game everything depends where each knight are. Usually, I divide the board in two and the knight at the right, are always looking right and the knight on the left of the board are always looking to the left. 

TalJechin wrote on 11/03/06 at 09:56:43:


Nigel Short points his Knights forward, the late Tony Miles used to have them facing each other, if we can get more data we can come to some conclusions on this - could be a topic for a Masters thesis....

My approach is a bit more scientific:
I place both Knights pointing to the left and in this way you only need 2 fingers to move them (index & thumb). So, with the remaining 3 fingers you can simultaneously capture an enemy piece. I don't know why but when the Knights are pointed forward, I tend to use 3 fingers to move them (and when I need to capture a piece the juggling part starts!). 

P.S.: I have also noticed that this slightly disturbs some people (purists I'll say) like Willempie! The funny thing is that I fall into this category as well (!) and would prefer that my opponent's Knights are pointed forward

P.S.2: I just noticed TalJechin's post above and wanted to add that Kasparov's Knights were always pointed to the left at the start of each game during his match with Short (London 1993). So, I suppose this is could also be the sign of an attacking (and maybe uncompromising) player..