Enter Your Reply The Comment You're Replying To H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Apr 19, 2009 07:26 AM UTC:Yes, it seems I have to go 'back to basics', and first make sure that the program handles the pieces well. I was running the test where the Guanaco did so poorly with programmed-in values that had the Guanaco worth slightly less than a Knight (240 vs 259 in the peculiar micro-Max internal units that have B=296). So the problem you mention could not have occurred. I did not program the Guanaco as a piece that has to be centralized, however. Fairy-Max knows two kind of pieces, those that are lightly) drawn to the center (Kings, Knights and Bishops), and those that move neutrally over the board (which works better for Rooks and Queens). I programmed the Guanaco as belonging to the latter group, because I figurered that its rider moves woud make it behave like a Rook, while the Llama was obviously short range and not very valuable, so the center was the obvious place for that. But perhaps the Guanaco has to be centralized to perform well. This can matter a lot: for the Lion (FWADN) I initially figured that it was too valuable to centralize it (it would only be chased), but giving the program a drive to centralize upped its value by nearly half a Pawn. So the first thing I will do now (last night's tests were spoiled by auto-updates...) is to test a symmetric position with Guanaco-for-Knight substitution, between two differently configured versions of Fairy-Max, one that centralizes the Guanaco, the other that doesn't. (And perhaps repeat it with Guanaco-for-Bishop substtutions, or GG for BN.) This should tell me if a Guanaco gets you more when it is centralized. After that I will do a a Guanaco vs Llama test, between idenical engines that handle the Guanaco in the way that proved best. In this test I will configure the Guanaco only very slightly above the Llama in value. We know the Guanaco must be better. This should result in an initial empirical Guanaco-Llama difference. The test should then be repeated with this value programmed in, for confirmation. One question: would the end-game you show not be equally won when black had a Llama rather than a Guanaco? That it is won might be due more to thefact that black has an extra Pawn, while white has two very awkward Pawns (one backward, one isolated) than to the Guanaco being so powerful. Edit Form You may not post a new comment, because ItemID MatsNewPieces does not match any item.