H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Jul 21, 2019 09:16 AM UTC:
Piece values are an average over all plausible positions anyway, furthermore based on the assumption that the value of an army is the sum of its parts. (Although the B-pair bonus strictly speaking already is an exception to that). So it is to be expected that in individual positions the performance is not as good as the standard value suggests. E.g. the value of a Bishop is commonly considered to be dependent on the shade the Pawns are on. And a Queen is more valuable when the opponent has poor King safety, so you can effectively double-move it via intermediate checks.
What you show here is not evidence of that, however. That there is no obvious compensation doesn't mean there is no compensation. Apart from the Bishop-Knight imbalance, the position is quite asymmetric. So the absolute value of the position cannot really be attributed to material only. A better test would be to replace one of the white Bishops by a Knight, and then look how much the position scores on average. If white is then significantly worse you know it cannot be due to material, as that is perfectly balanced.
Piece values are an average over all plausible positions anyway, furthermore based on the assumption that the value of an army is the sum of its parts. (Although the B-pair bonus strictly speaking already is an exception to that). So it is to be expected that in individual positions the performance is not as good as the standard value suggests. E.g. the value of a Bishop is commonly considered to be dependent on the shade the Pawns are on. And a Queen is more valuable when the opponent has poor King safety, so you can effectively double-move it via intermediate checks.
What you show here is not evidence of that, however. That there is no obvious compensation doesn't mean there is no compensation. Apart from the Bishop-Knight imbalance, the position is quite asymmetric. So the absolute value of the position cannot really be attributed to material only. A better test would be to replace one of the white Bishops by a Knight, and then look how much the position scores on average. If white is then significantly worse you know it cannot be due to material, as that is perfectly balanced.