Musketeer Chess Relative Piece Value

Hi, please take a look at the following link. It's the first time i release this work. It was the fruit of months working on an engine, testing, conforting and refuting my own evaluation of the relative strength of the 10 used Fairy Pieces.

The main objective is to give a start to all the Chess Variant Lovers, particularly Musketeer Chess lovers and help them ease their evaluation of the positions. It's also the second lesson someone has to teach, after knowing and mastering how the pieces move.

Here is the awaited link:

http://musketeerchess.net/site/musketeer-chess-relative-piece-value/

 Many thanks for article 

Can you determine the approximate value of King + Camel piece. 

K = one square in any direction + C = elongated knight. 

Super Knight

The Super Knight can move like a Rook or a Knight or a King. 

My guess is around 10-11 points. 

Excellent site, bookmarked page ✔

First note that Larry Kaufman's work on piece values is not at all based on 'his engine' Komodo, or in fact on any Chess engine. For one, at the time he published it, Komodo did not exist, and Larry Kaufman was part of the development team of Rybka. But his piece values are based on statistical analysis of grand-master games.

The articles at the links you gave are an interesting read, but it is important to keep in mind that they are just talk and speculation, and in no way rooted in the reality of game play. This causes some of the given piece values to be dead wrong. (I.e. differing more than a full Pawn from what they are in reality.) The methods used in the recreomathematica paper to guess the values are quite advanced, but they remain just guesses. A complex calculation is done, even with the help of a computer, and it is then assumed the result of this calculation represents the piece value. But this is just an untested assumption, and the guess is no better than that assumption.

And the method used has some obvious problems: it averages the 'piece activity' over randomly generated positions. But such positions differ a lot from positions you would encounter in games, also on average. Players would avoid putting pieces in locations where they have below average mobility, so an average over randomly generated positions overweights the poor locations.

The only reliable way to determine piece values is to measure how the involved pieces affect the outcome of games. Piece values would mean nothing if they were not a good predictor of game results. This is also the method used by Larry Kaufman, using a huge database of human GM games. If games started with a material imbalance of a Queen versus an Archbishop plus Pawn (in the presence of a lot of balanced material in may different combiations) consistently show an advantage for the side having A+P (scoring, say, 54%), as has been well established, it by definition means that the difference between the Q and A value must be less then one Pawn.

I wonder about the Value of Several Pieces... :

1. How would the Chinese Cannon and it's Diagonal Counterpart the Vao Be Valued on the Scale? The Korean Versions?

2. I created the Piece Called the Zazu, Named after the character in the Lion King. It would be able to move to a space next to any one of the 2 Kings. It can Capture like a Queen. When Next to the Opposing King, It is Not considered Check and the Opposing King would not be able to eliminate the Zazu.

3. The Assassin Moves like a King and Captures Like the Queen.

4. The Coroner would Move like a Just King with one exception : If on a Corner, it would be able to Move to any Other Corner, leaping over all intermediate Pieces.

5. The Mongolian Bodyguard is a rather interesting Piece. It is able to move one or two spaces in any direction. any Piece that moves within a King's Distance from the Bodyguard would have to stop on that Space. while a piece is next to the Bodyguard they could only move one Square in their usual directions. Semi-Leaping Pieces (I.E. Arch Bishop and Chancellor) Would only have their Non- Leaping Properties Affected by this. Leaping Pieces (I.E. Unicorn and Knight) would be completely Unaffected. The Bodyguard cannot give Check nor Mate.