The Queen is the most powerful piece. She is able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Both players start the game with one queen, placed in the middle next to the king. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts on a white square and the black queen on a black square. This gave rise to the mnemonics “queen gets her color”, “queen on color”, and “queen on her own color.” Because the queen is the most powerful piece, when a pawn is promoted it is almost always promoted to a queen.
A “queen sacrifice” is when the queen is deliberately sacrificed in order to gain a more favorable tactical position.
Since the Queen is the most powerful piece, beginners often use it as soon as possible hoping to end the game early, but since it is so valuable it is also often vulnerable to attacks from the weaker pieces. This is because it is a poor strategy to exchange such a valuable piece for a lesser one, as a result the Queen often has to fall back after it is threatened.
Generally experienced players delay the queens use favoring minor pieces in the opening instead. An early queen attack is rare in the high level chess.