I wonder, could the way you put the knights be a 'tell'? i.e. would players of different styles be prone to turn them in a certain direction?! E.g. I can imagine that knights facing forward could be the choice of a very aggressive player... 

Does anyone here know which way some of the big names put their knights?

My knights still maintain their initial direction thro-out the game.  So, if I play the Alekhine they both look in opposite directions ie on c6 & b6. Does look as if they both had a quarrel!

It fills me with horror that 5 people (now 6!) in such a short list prefer to have the knights facing forward.
Facing left or right, even diagonal; that's all fine with me...but straight ahead?  Thats just wrong.  Yuck!

I used to have them face each other; until I started to play the mainline King's Indian as White.
I found myself wondering (actually during games, mind you)  if that knight on b5 had come from g1 or b1 originally.

"Well...it's facing left, so it must be from the kingside.  Oh wait, they're both facing left now.  hmm...maybe I rotated it when I captured on d4.  No wait, that knight came from c3 and captured when he played that stupid ...b5 sacrifice.  No, that knight already moved back....right?" 

Basically I needed any excuse to avoid calculating ...f5 yet again.

Anyway, I decided I didn't care which way they were facing anymore and resolved to never waste clock time on such silliness again. 
But then I read that Tony Miles was watching some players analyze their game in a post-mordem when he simply leaned over the board, adjusted one of the guy's knights and said something like "this knight needs to be facing left.  Otherwise, that combination won't work."   
That got a little laugh out of the players and it made me decide to always face my knights to the left as a strange tribute to Tony.

Cheers,
Nietzsche 

ps - I haven't gone so far as to play 1...a6, but a little tribute is good enough right?

MNb wrote on 11/02/06 at 01:12:27:


When I was a kid I also used to put them that way, then I gradually went over to them facing each other. Maybe because Nc3/Nd4 and Nf6/Ne5 in the Dragon & Leningrad somehow looked more appealing with the horsies that way...

At the moment I'm a bit surprised that option 1 is lagging behind, I had the impression that mimicking the demo board was the most common?!


The most unusual set up I've seen used is probably IM/GM? Zagorskis' in Politiken 1997(?) who had Ng1 looking diagonally forward to the right and Nb1 diagonally backwards to the left. 

And since I still remember that - I didnt even play the guy, just strolled by lookin at his games during 11 rounds - then perhaps how you put the knights isn't totally without meaning?! 

I make it a sport not to place them similar in any way, to annoy geometrical purists.

Thanks. I voted diagonally looking towards the centre. Actually my knights are heading for c3 and f3 (c6 and f6), so they make an angle of about 60 degrees.

Prince-Nez wrote on 11/01/06 at 22:04:56:


and naughty Knights should be looking at their Queen  

Good Knights should always be looking at their King when the game starts.