Ordination

In the dying seconds of an online blitz game, I promoted a pawn and instantly regretted it. There was nothing wrong with the move, but the extra second spent on choosing and clicking the queen was more than I could spare. A few flailing moves later, my time ran out. Of course, I had forgotten to switch on ‘Always Queen’, a handy setting offered by all decent chess websites. Some 99 per cent of the time, a queen is what you want.

But just occasionally, a knight, rook or bishop is superior. A knight may land with check, where a queen does not. To see a rook or bishop trump a queen is rarer still, as neither piece has any obvious point in its favour. But it can happen in scenarios where a queen would stalemate the opponent, but a lesser piece would not. If so, a rook usually hits the sweet spot – competent, but not overqualified.