How Much Is A Tempo Worth?

In many books it is written that the best moves are often the ones that win you a tempo. For example, in the Scandinavian Defense, 1.e4 d5 2.exd4 Qxd4 3.Nc3

https://www.chess.com/openings/Scandinavian-Defense-Mieses-Kotrc-Variation-3.Nc3

White's third move brings the Knight out, both developing a piece and attacking the Queen. Black must then move the Queen out of the way. Instead of using the move to develop an attack, Black must use up a move defending.

When calculating which move is best we need to weigh up the value of winning a tempo against many other factors. So how much is a tempo worth?

We can use the chess.com evaluation bar to help us answer that.

Let's take the starting position:

Here the position is entirely even, but White already has an advantage over Black. Why is this? Because White gets to move first. White has a tempo advantage over Black.

How much is this worth? The Stockfish analysis engine can calculate this for us. At a low depth, the evaluation says it is worth about half a pawn, but if you increase the depth it calculates the value to approximately one third of a pawn.

Diamond members can change the move analysis depth up to 99.

When this is set, the depth will increase by one at a time, until it either eventually reaches 99 or you decide to quit. A depth of 30 is usually good enough for most purposes.

So White initially has an advantage of about 1/3 of a pawn, and this is why chess players usually prefer to play as White.

The Analysis Setup menu allows us to setup a positions that go against the normal chess rules, such the starting position with Black to move!

By loading in this position and watching the evaluation bar, we can see that it Black were to start the game instead of White, Black would have the same tempo advantage of roughly 1/3 of a pawn at the start of the game.

We can find some more positions where the only difference between White and Black is the tempo. The most of common of these is 1.e4 e5

Here the evaluation engine calculates +0.22

What about 1.d4 d5

Here the evaluation engine calculates +0.25 suggesting White is very slightly better here than 1.e4 e5

Another way to see the value of a tempo is by changing the color that is next to move.

Here we have a middlegame position in a game played by Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in 2012:

Here it is Black to move, and the evaluation is +0.98 meaning Magnus is approximately a pawn better than Hikaru.

The Notation for this position is:

2r2rk1/1p4bp/pq1p1pp1/3Pp3/3nP3/2RBBP2/PP1Q2PP/5R1K b - - 2 22

By changing the letter from b to w we have

2r2rk1/1p4bp/pq1p1pp1/3Pp3/3nP3/2RBBP2/PP1Q2PP/5R1K w - - 2 22

Loading in this position, the evaluation comes to +1.36, so the ability to move next is worth about a 3rd of a pawn again.

In some sharper positions, being able to move next is worth dramatically more. For example in races to promote to a Queen, one tempo often decides the game.

There are also some endgame positions where moving next has negative value. These positions are called zugswang.

I invite you to experiment with some different position, and see what you can discover.

Thanks for reading.