Check out Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, our featured variant for May, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Mar 13 06:51 AM UTC in reply to Kevin Pacey from Tue Mar 12 07:44 PM:

The problem with Pawns is that they are severely area bound, so that not all Pawns are equivalent, and some of these 'sub-types' cooperate better than others. Bishops in principle suffer from this too, but one seldomly has those on equal shades. (But still: good Bishop and bad Bishop.) So you cannot speak of THE Pawn value; depending on the Pawn constellation it might vary from 0.5 (doubled Rook Pawn), to 2.5 (7th-rank passer).

Kaufman already remarked that a Bishop appears to be better than a Knight when pitted against a Rook, which means it must have been weaker in some other piece combinations to arrive at an equal overall average. But I think common lore has it that Knights are particularly bad if you have Pawns on both wings, or in general, Pawns that are spread out. By requiring that the extra Pawns are connected passers you would more or less ensure that: there must be other Pawns, because in a pure KRKNPP end-game the Rook has no winning chances at all.

Rules involving a Bishop, like Q=R+B+P are always problematic, because it depends on the presence of the other Bishop to complete the pair. And also here the leveling effect starts to kick in, although to a lesser extent than with Q vs 3 minors. But add two Chancellors and Archbishops, and Q < R+B. (So really Q+C+A < C+A+R+B).


Edit Form
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.