How a queen moves in chess

  The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of their first rank next to their king. Beginners often accidentally interchange the placement of the queen and king, thus the expression "queen on her color." The white queen starts on a white square, and the black queen on a black square. In algebraic notation, the white queen starts on d1 and the black queen on d8.

  The queen can move in a straight line vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, any number of unoccupied squares as shown on the diagram at below, thus combining the moves of the rook and bishop. Like other pieces, the queen captures by occupying the square on which an enemy piece sits.

The queen radiates power on an open board,

groping a total of 27 squares in all four quadrants. 

   Ordinarily the queen is slightly more powerful than a rook and a bishop together, while slightly less powerful than two rooks. Because the queen is more valuable than any other piece, it is almost always disadvantageous to exchange the queen for a piece other than the enemy's queen, unless doing so leads to a position where the king can be checkmated.

   The queen is at her most powerful when the board is open, when the enemy king is not well-defended, or when there are loose (i.e. undefended) pieces in the enemy camp. Because of her long range and ability to move in more than one direction, the queen is well-equipped to execute forks, but these are only useful if the forked pieces are undefended, or one is undefended and the other is the enemy king.