Jumping Over Pieces

Last chapter ended with a law: sliding pieces stop at the first piece in their path. The knight is the only piece in chess that ignores that law. It jumps clean over whatever stands in the way, friend or enemy. Look at the starting position:

Not one pawn has moved, yet the knight on g1 can already leap over the pawn wall to f3 or h3.

Because the knight flies over everything, the pieces in between simply do not matter. Only the landing square counts: if it is empty, the knight moves there; if an enemy piece stands on it, the knight lands and captures it; if one of your own pieces stands on it, the jump is forbidden. That is why the g1 knight above cannot go to e2: e2 is in its L range, but White's own pawn lives there.

Walled in on every side by its own pawns, the knight still has all eight jumps. A rook on d4 here could not move at all.

This is also why every real game begins the way it does. On move one, the sliding pieces are all asleep behind the pawns, so White's twenty possible first moves are sixteen pawn moves and four knight jumps: to a3 or c3 with one knight, f3 or h3 with the other.