Help! Why don't fairy chess pieces have values?

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Avatar of evert823

In an attempt to access the papers that are being discussed here (for curiosity), I found some links:

Taylor's paper:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786447608639029

Trice's paper:

https://content.iospress.com/articles/icga-journal/icg27203

These websites charge 50.00 and 27.50 respectively. Based on what I've read here so far, I say that I myself have better purposes for that money.

Avatar of Letchworthshire

Anyone on the Discord Server for his variant has access to all of his papers for free.

https://triceschess.com/annotations/80.pdf

Annotated games with a diagram and notes for every move:

http://triceschess.com/annotations/game_notes_01.pdf

http://triceschess.com/annotations/game_notes_02.pdf

http://triceschess.com/annotations/capablanca_problems.pdf

Avatar of Nordlandia

Has it not become common knowledge that a non-royal king is on par a knight in face value. Plus minus a minuscule smidgen

Avatar of Letchworthshire

Can anyone name a game where anyone sits down to play with that non-existent king?

Avatar of Nordlandia

Knightmate

Variant where the role of the king and knight is exchanged: players win by checkmating the knight, and the kings are regular pieces subject to capture.

Avatar of HGMuller

Metamachy was pretty popular on the Jocly server when it still existed, and is frequently played as corresponcence chess on chessvariants.com. It involves a piece called Prince, that moves and captures as King. It also has a strictly forward non-capturing double step, but that cannot check either, so the safe-checking theory predicts a value zero for it.

Regular Shogi involves pieces called the Gold and Silver General, which have a subset of the moves of a King. So the safe checking theory also predicts these have zero value. Shogi players know better... How many people play Shogi? Wasn't that something like 50 million? How does that compare to the number of people that play Trice's Chess? But of course this will be dismissed as totally irrelevant, because most of these Shogi players are Japanese. happy.png

Of course all that talk on how many people use it is the thing that is truly irrelevant, and only brought up as a distraction. Predicting an insane value for a piece that no one ever uses disqualifies a theory just as much as predicting zero value for the Rook.

Avatar of Letchworthshire

I chatted with Ed Trice this morning and asked him what he thought of H.G. Muller. Here is his exact words:

“Tell him I said ‘Hello’ from America. Haven’t chatted with him in a while. My opinion of him? He’s brilliant. He’s a physicist as I recall. I thought he worked at CERN at one point in his career. He wrote some chess programs way back when I was still in grade school. Also 10x8 programs that were rated just about 2300 as their 8x8 predecessors. Yeah we disagree about piece weights but we never had ‘battles’ over it like you describe. I like him as a programming comrade and my advice to you is stop arguing with him. He’s helped me with programming ideas more than I helped him, so do me a favor and leave him alone. And simmer down yourself there’s no reason to get upset over stuff like what you described. Play whatever variants you like and don’t engage with people trying to say which variant is better or best or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Remember you’re representing our playing community so your antics and fighting will reflect poorly if you keep it up. So smoke the ‘Peace Pipe’ with H.G. and make sure you tell him I said hello.”

That’s a good enough endorsement for me.

I offer my Peace Pipe to H.G. Sorry I got so upset.

Avatar of HGMuller

Well, Ed Trice is a wise man. I never worked at CERN, btw; what they do there is another field ('high-energy physics'), with needs experiments so huge that teams consisting of hundreds of people are needed to perform them. I am too much of a maverick for that kind of work. My field was atomic & molecular physics, where you can do experiments with equipment that fits in a room, with just 3 or 4 people. The experiment for which the Nobel prize is now awarded already had an unusually large number of investigators as authors in the paper that reported it; this was because it was a EU-funded cooperation between three laboratories (two French, one Dutch). I and one of my students participated on behalf of the Dutch. And 8 people doesn't sound as crowded as it actually was, as the three authors that had been responsible for the development of the laser we used had mostly completed their work even before we arrived. The laser was set up in a separate room anyway, the beam coming through a small hole in the wall so the visitors from other labs could use it without bringing in dust. Being with five on our part of the experiment allowed us to take shifts in operating the equipment, while we could sent out others to fetch pizza. happy.png

Avatar of Letchworthshire

Well pizza is strong motivation as a reward mechanism for any experiment so no wonder your lab had good results happy.png

Avatar of Letchworthshire

I really thought after pushing the pawn from h4 to h5 hitting the chancellor and archbishop simultaneously that I would win this game. My opponent escaped and later won!

Avatar of Thruul_Mcgon

Bro thinks a rook is weaker that a bishop

Avatar of Nordlandia

The theory that rook is not exactly 5, maybe there is something to it. I'd rather give 4.8 than 4.75

Avatar of HGMuller
Nordlandia schreef:

The theory that rook is not exactly 5, maybe there is something to it. I'd rather give 4.8 than 4.75

In the computer games I played the initial value of the Rook indeed was around 4.75 instead of 5. Later I discovered that all orthogonally moving pieces (e.g. Wazir) test below their expected value if you start them on the back rank behind a closed rank of Pawns. But their value increases by a quarter Pawn if you start them between or in front of the Pawns.

I suppose this is related to the 'open file bonus' that some engines award to Rooks that control open files. In the end-game most files are open, or the Rook is already in front of its Pawns. So it seems the open-file bonus becomes an integral part of the Rook's value there.

Avatar of Nordlandia

When we are at it. How much would you estimate the difference between Archbishop in case the archbishop is enhanced by a wazir and the chancellor an ferz.

One of the major drawbacks of these pieces is not full coverage at close range.

Avatar of HGMuller

Intuitively I would think that the difference goes up. Their common moves are now N+K, and both the remaining part of the Rook-like and Bishop-like slide cause 8 more orthogonal contacts. So the fact remains that Rook moves are worth more than Bishop moves (probably also because the former make orthogonal contacts).

I did test RF (7) and BW (5.25), and these have about the same difference as R and B.

Avatar of Thruul_Mcgon

I guess chess.com takes the compound value

Avatar of Thruul_Mcgon

In that case they could checkmate a king by themselves

Avatar of Thruul_Mcgon

Also, according to the "safe check" theory, piece that capture like a king and could move(not capture!) anywhere would have a walue of zero.

Avatar of LouisXXIV
HGMuller 写道:

I did test RF (7) and BW (5.25), and these have about the same difference as R and B.

Hello Master Muller ! I am a newcomer but interested in your theory and know you long ago.

I have saw similar claim that RF is better than BW before too, but he didn't give why. May I ask what kind of test you are using now to reach this conclusion?
And, does your piece-value-calculation-formula-by-square-control get any update these years? I get quite little information on it.

Avatar of stocksha
I think chanselor