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Dimachaer ChessA game information page
. Introducing the Dimachaer, a bifurcation piece that always lands on the diagonal second leg (zrf available).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 05:33 AM UTC:
Well, I tested the Xiangqi Cannon once in the Western context, and its opening value was also only slightly below that of a (Western) Knight. I guess the Secutor suffers a lot from the fact that it can be blocked, while the Cannon cannot. Another factor might be that captures contribute more to piece value than non-captures, while the Cannon has the more powerful orthogonal Slider move as capture.

As to the handling: You should not forget that I test with Fairy-Max, which also has no kowledge on specific handling of orthodox pieces. In a program with more knowledge (e.g. piece-square tables) the value of the Secutor might go up, but the value of the Knight likely would go up too, meaning that the relative value would be much less sensitive to this. Fairy-Max does distinguish pieces that should be centralized (P,N,B,K in orthodox Chess) and pieces that roam freely, though. I programmed the Secutor as a piece that could roam freely, because it is long-range and actually needs distance to its platform. For the Lion (FWADN) the value went up about 50cP by centralizing it! (It is short-range, so perhaps this should be expected, but before I tested it I had the belief that centralizing very valuable pieces was not good because it would make them easy chase targets. Of course the value increase by better handling should be seen relative to total value, and Lion > Q, so it is only ~5%.)