Orienting the knights

Facing forward. It's war, not a cocktail party.

World Chess Championship 2024 set them up your way.

Norway Chess 2024 had them facing AWAY from the king.

I face them inward.

I face them towards each other.

Blasphemy. My knights always face right.

I face em towards the left. Easier to pick up that way, I think.

starting out in tournament chess I placed them forward
Nowadays I have them face each other.

they're sneakier w/ a lower profile
just ask the bishops

Exactly the same with me. Seemed like pointing forward started feeling like an uncool newb's play to me.

Now kings: cross has to face forward. And yes, there better be a cross!

Backward facing knights are OP:

I always have faced my knights forward since childhood playing days. One time I played an opponent who is a jackass and kept adjusting them to face sideways after every turn. Played him 10 times prior and he never did this, we just had a falling out because he's a terrible person who should be incarcerated.

Anyway I handled this by adjusting my knights to face backwards. (facing me) Then he tried to adjust them on my turn and I called the director over to complain about his adjustments with the argument that the rulebook says as long as the piece is centered, it is considered properly placed.

The director, who is generally a know-it-all seemed a bit confused, plus he also hates my opponent because no one likes the guy and he probably didn't wanna rule against me 😀

This. Always forward.

They used to be facing opposite directions so you could tell which one started where, which sometimes made it easier to describe in descriptive notation (eg, KN-K5, meaning the kingside knight moved to e5 if you were white). Algebraic removed the need for this.