Rook or queen?

ROOK AND THE QUEEN BOTH IS USEFUL

queens and rook both is useful

Queen is powerful Senor

quenn

So after spending the last 36.17284 hours studying the best pieces for Racing Kings, I've determined that it is neither the rook nor queen.

The issue is that rooks can easily be stopped by no-check rule and in equal positions provide drawn endgames.

The issue is that queens can also easily be stopped by no-check rule and in losing positions provide lost endgames.

Queens and rooks therefore suck! That's right! Just sacrifice them at will and keep your other pieces. But wait, there's more to this! Bishops also fall victim to that same idea. We also know that kings are fricken useless! Like, you only lose in standard chess because you have a king! You don't need them to win Racing Kings! The truth is, the knight is the trickiest piece to understand. It jumps over pieces and moves weirdly! It confuses your opponent and can easily cause them to blunder mate in 1 when they had mate in 1! The knights together form an unbeatable pair that can even stop any piece from being useful and, in turn, defeating them. The knight is the best piece in Racing Kings, better than both the queen and rook!

But in all seriousness, that was entirely satyrical. Do not follow any of the advice aforementioned. Rooks and Queens both have their importance. A much stronger player will leave a response and well thought-out answer later.

Hey everyone!

This is quite a nice question to open the forum of our official team.

Short answer: overall the queen is the stronger piece in RK, just like it is in most chess variants. Being able to cover and move diagonally gives the queen a clear advantage, despite that capturing options may be limited due to the no-check-rule. However, this CANNOT be used as a general rule, and has to be assessed per position. There are plenty of examples where having a queen would be much better than a rook, but you'll find that there are lots of positions where both pieces are equal or where having a rook would actually be the more advantageous piece.

For more concrete examples and explanations, I've created a Lichess study to illustrate some of the differences between queens and rooks in RK. They're quite instructive endgame and middlegame patterns that you should keep in mind, and that you might even be able to put to use some day. Enjoy :-)

Let me know if there are any questions!

Study link:

Thanks @RoyalManiac