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Piece Values[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Apr 22, 2008 06:18 PM UTC:
Reinhardt, this is the place for the discussion of piece values here at the
cv.org site. It was started quite a while ago, but has almost no entries. I
guess the discussion from a while back on the cvwiki would also be
relevant.
George, thank you! That thread was started by Mike Nelson on 3/21/04,
about 12,500 comments ago. It's worth reading.
Jianying Ji, 'argument' below your comment in Aberg:

'2008-04-18	Jianying Ji Verified as Jianying Ji	None	
Theoretical considerations ... must tempered by empirical
experimentation. Below is my theoretical analysis of C vs A situation.

First let's take the following values:

R: 4.5
B: 3
N: 3

Now the bishop is a slider so should have greater value then knight, but
it is color bound so it gets a penalty by decreasing its value by a third,
which reduce it to that of the knight. 

When Bishop is combined with Knight, the piece is no longer color bound so
the bishop component gets back to its full strength (4.5), which is
rookish. As a result Archbishop and Chancellor become similar in value.'
                 ***                 ***
I would argue that your conclusion on the values would be correct on an
infinite board, where the values of the bishop, rook, and queen have all
converged to infinity. [see cvwiki discussion] On an 8x8 board, the
unhindered rook moves 14, and the bishop between 7 and 13. This must act
to push the value back down. So, what counterbalances it? The RN gets
16-22 on an 8x8, and 18-24 on a 10x8. The BN gets 9 in the corner on
either size board, going to a maximum of 21. Can the 4 'forward' attacks
of the BN vs the RN's 3 and its ability to checkmate alone really overcome
the noticeable mobility disadvantage?