Is a bishop fienchetto a bad idea ?

Clearly, black's queen is much stronger in the diagram below ;)...controlling 22 squares to the white queen's 4...(or maybe not)

Of course black's knight is the more active piece too, because the white one only controls 6 squares rather than 8.

Touche'  

Are the tactics in the position based on the number of squares the pieces control or which squares they control?

You clearly don't understand that the strength of a piece is based on a specific position.

The idea that you can ignore the other pieces and declare the e5 knight stronger is laughable.

btickler is an 1800 and scottrf is a 2000 on the site.  I don't know if you should consider them "near beginners"...

It would help if you would initially clarify your original position more fully.

Again about the actual evaluation:

Yes. The activity of the rook ITSELF was lowered.

But...

The a1 rook's activity was increased DRAMATICALLY (6x multiplier!)

The f8 rook's activity declined (tied to f7)

The b8 rook's activity decilined too... This is much more significant than one piece, but it was not my argument.

"GM Igor Smirnov does this in his original video series (I trained with this one prior to the World Open too btw): he gets rid of all the pieces and puts a knight on the rim vs a knight in the center and tells us about which one is more active."

Well without pieces it may be more active (not that it can be active on an empty board), but a knight on a good advanced square which is actually hitting important squares is clearly a more active piece than one hitting the same number on an unimportant area of the board.

"Yes. The activity of the rook ITSELF was lowered."

OK I'll pass here. If you think a piece doing nothing is more active than a piece doing a lot there's no hope.

And the original decrease of activity for the rooks was slight as well.

BTW, if we use the changes in activity I described, and the position's material remained equal (it did and scott used a quiet position as well, so it is suitable), then we can conclude Rc7 is an excellent move!

We can't play an actual game of chess without kings on the board, so, a piece's value is always going to be relative to more than simply the number of squares it controls or how centralized it is.  

I understand that you are talking about the concepts above in a manner similar to a basic chess book that shows the difference in potential between a knight in a corner vs. a knight on a central square...but that is a beginner's illustrative idea, and the actual answer is not that simple, because, again...there are always kings on the board.

Hold on! don't go yet, debating is fun :).

I never said that I thought a piece doing nothing is more active...where did you get that? quote it...please don't make assumptions with no base. Nowhere did I say c rooks was less active relative to the others: I said it's activty decreased..

The point of a fiancetto is to control the center in hypermodern fashion, attacking from a distance with pieces. thus a fiancetto is most effective in a hypermodern opening like the pirc, Reti or KID, or in an opening like the Catalan, where your center pawns do not occupy squares on the fiancettoed bishop's diagonal.

The rook is doing nothing on c1, whereas on c7 it is hitting important squares.

I don't believe it's more active because it can go to f1, g1 etc, the importance of the squares>the number.