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Piece Value[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 01:24 AM UTC:

The important thing about this hobbled Queen is that it is a major piece.
That makes it more valuable than minor pieces like the Bishop and Knight.
I do not believe that Zillions checks whether a piece is major or minor in
its piece value calculations. I believe it focuses on how many spaces a
piece can move to. Here's an experiement. Create a piece that can teleport
to any empty space, but which has no other power of moving. I bet Zillions
will think it is very valuable -- even though it can never check the King.

Ben Good wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 01:40 AM UTC:

this question can't be answered without knowing how big the board is. the bigger the board, the less of a big deal the hobbling is. the only hobbled piece i can think of that i've played with is the hobbled bishop in timur's. zillions rates it 2.3 pawns, and indeed i found it very difficult to use. the timur's giraffe, which has to go at least 3 squares, is practically useless til the endgame. on the other hand, in rennchess the duke and the cavalier can be considered hobbled as well, since they can't move to adjacent squares, and altho this is a definitely a weakness, they are nonetheless strong pieces. so i would guess zillions' value is too low, but it's hard to tell w/o knowing the context of the game.

Ben Good wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 01:43 AM UTC:

after i submitted my comment i read this again: 'which will be a queen that must go at least 2 squares, and is blocked if the adjacent square is occupied.' isn't this redundant, or am i missing something? i don't know of any precedent for naming the hobbled queen. if i remember correctly, in meta-chess, williams-brown calls such pieces 'lame', and refers to the timur's bishop as the lame bishop.

Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 03:23 AM UTC:

The British Chess Variants Society's <a href='http://www.bcvs.ukf.net/gvcm.htm#S'>All the King's Men</a> page has an entry for Ski Pieces which defined as: <blockquote> SKI PIECE Any line rider modified by omitting the first cell in its ride, i.e. it begins with a little ski-jump. Hence ski-queen, ski-rook, ski-bishop [G.P.Jelliss The Problemist 1973] also ski-nightrider. </blockquote> So pieces that must move at least two, but are not blocked by adjacent pieces seem to exist. (Actually, there is also the Boojum piece that moves like a Queen, leaping the first square in my game of <a href='../41.dir/snark-hunt.html'>Snark Hunt</a>.)

Peter Aronson wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 03:33 AM UTC:

At one point I attempted to implement Ralph Betza's game of <a href='../d.betza/chessvar/ghost.html'>The Black Ghost</a>. The piece that gives the game its name, the Black Ghost, teleports to any empty square, but can't capture. Ralph had valued it as less than a Pawn -- Zillions rated it as about 1.5 Queens.

Ben Good wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 04:08 AM UTC:

>>So pieces that must move at least two, but are not blocked by adjacent pieces seem to exist. aha, this is why mhowe put both stipulations in his definition. so he wasn't redundant after all.

Glenn Overby II wrote on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 02:53 PM UTC:

Zillions also overvalues dramatically the Teleporter in my ABChess.  That's
a divergent piece which can move anywhere (outside Xiangqi-like
fortresses) to a space of the opposite color, but captures only as a Wazir
(including into or within a fortress).  ZoG makes it worth about 1.5
Queens on an 11x11 board.  I figure it for perhaps half that, and that may
still be high.

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