The chef's knife is truly the queen of knive's, it is truly a multi-tasking tool.  The chef's knife is heavy enough to chop things such as poultry, and long enough to carve and slice with. It's also great at dicing ingredients up for the main entree.  This should be one of the first knive's you invest in, then you can buy the other knive's to fill in around it.  The chef's knive is the knife that allow you to do all the cutting chores with just one knife. Equally as versatile is the santoku or japanese chefs knife.