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Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Dec 19, 2013 11:38 AM EST:

Actually the Nutty Knights beat the *** out of FIDE. They score about halfway between when you give otherwise equal armies one extra Pawn or two extra Pawns. So they seem to have a 1.5 Pawn advantage. The Colorbound Clobberers are also stronger than FIDE, but not by as much (slightly less than a Pawn), so the Nutty Knights also have the edge over those.

It seems that especially the charging Knights are much stronger than one would expect. It seems you also don't take account of the fact that compound pieces usually are stronger than the sum of their parts. Otherwise the Queen would be worth 5 + 3 = 8, rather than 9.5. You also do not take account of the fact that forward moves are worth more than backward (or sideway) moves, so that the fsR part is worth more than 3/4 of R (more like 4/5, as forward moves approximately contribute twice as much).

I did not test the Rookies army as extensively, as Fairy-Max only recently implemented that army. (Upto then the short Rook was the problem; Fairy-Max did not implement limited-range sliders.)