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The Piececlopedia is intended as a scholarly reference concerning the history and naming conventions of pieces used in Chess variants. But it is not a set of standards concerning what you must call pieces in newly invented games.

Piececlopedia: Giraffe

Historical notes

AI Concept Art of an ebony Giraffe piece

In several variants of chess, pieces with the name Giraffe appear. By chess problem composers, the name denotes a piece that makes a kind of stretched knight's jump.

Movement

The giraffe has a kind of `stretched' knights-move: it makes a 1,4-jump, i.e, it jumps to a square that is either four squares horizontally and one square vertically away, or to that is four squares vertically and one square horizontally away.

It jumps, i.e., the giraffe can move regardless whether passed squares are occupied by other pieces or not.

Movement diagram

Checkmating

The Giraffe cannot inflict checkmate on a rectangular board with only assistance of its own King, and is thus a minor piece. Even with a pair of Giraffes you cannot force checkmate on a bare King, but paired with another minor this is sometimes possible. Try it!

Printable Pieces

The following designs are available for printing on a 3D printer. Links are to Thingiverse.

Giraffe by Jean-Louis Cazaux
Giraffe from Historical Pieces by Bob Greenwade
Information taken from FIDE Album 1989-1991 (a book with a selection of chess problems.)
This is an item in the Piececlopedia: an overview of different (fairy) chess pieces.
Written by Hans Bodlaender. Piece images added by Fergus Duniho.
WWW page created: November 23, 1998.
Last updated: December 22, 2024.