Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Sep 8, 2016 01:02 PM UTC:

I don't believe the relative importance of captures andnon-captures for the piece value has much to do with the ratio empty squares - occupied squares. Both have a factor 2, but in opposite directions: there are only half as much capture targets, yet the captures are twice as important. Furthermore, tests of end-game values, on a much emptier board, usually give very similar conclusions as for opening values, for 'normal' pieces. (Pieces where the moves depend on 'spectator pieces', such as Pao / Vao,or lame leapers are exceptions.) I guess that even when there is ot much to capture, capture moves represent much of the value of the piece, as they can be used to cast a mate net around the enemy King.

The value of a piece in Chess is much dominated by its end-game value anyway, as sooner or later the board will get empty. This would be very different in games with drops, such as Shogi or Crazyhouse. There the pieces tend to relocate by drops much more than by board moves, so that differences in (non-capture) mobility are much less important.

Most of my piecevalue determinations were done on 8x8 or 10x8 boards, and even from that it seemed the size of the board can have a significant effect on the value of sliders versus leapers. E.g.on 8x8 a lone Bishop or Knight are approximately equal, but on 10x8 the Bishop was half a Pawn stronger. (Wide boards favor diagonal sliders, as the chance that both their forward moves hit the enemy gets larger.In Cylinder Chess the difference etween Bishop and Rook is even smaller than on 10x8.) The latest version of Fairy-Max can handle boards up to 14x12, but I have not used that in systematic piece-value testing yet.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Enep

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.