Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H.G.Muller wrote on Sat, Apr 19, 2008 02:34 PM UTC:
I agree that statistics from tablebases is very hard to interpret: more
than half the wins are usually tactical positions where pieces are
hanging, so that the outcome has nothing to do with the piece makeup in
question at all.

But this is a consequence of the inclusion of tactical initial positions
in the data set. The approximately 20,000 games I played to extract the
piece values given below were all played from tactically dead positions
(CRC-like opening positions, with some selected pieces deleted), where it
would take several moves to attack an enemy piece in the first place. Note
that I never played pieces in isolation (which could lead to the KNK effect
you mention), but always in a nearly full opening setup (34 or more Chess
men on the board).

As to the dependence of piece values on the fill fraction on the board:
one would only experience this effect to its full extent if the filling
fraction remained constant during the game (as in Crazyhouse, where indeed
the piece values are totally different from normal Chess). In games without
piece drops, the board will unavoidably get empty. So you will have to plan
to the future. It is true that in the early middle-game a Bishop is much
more dangerous than a Rook, (which, without open files, is almost
completely useless), but the difference is not so large that you can gain
enough material to neutralize the end-game-value difference before the
board gets empty enough that the advantage reverses. So it is still the
end-game value that dominates the piece value early on. The instantaneous
value tells you only the direction of a small correction that has to be
applied, and is very volatile.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess

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.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
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.