As before, the pieces are worth 31; the pawns another 8. So that gives 39.
It is not that the king is not worth anything; more that it is nonsensical to even think of the king having a value. You would never argue, well, in this exchange I can trade my king for his queen and rook. It just doesn't make any sense.
Is the trick about the bishop pair that worths 6.5 points ?
In this case the answer is 39.5 without the king.
I am sure I heard Josh Waitzkin or Larry Christiansen saying that the king worths 4 points.
ditto swestland...and now I will go scrape ice off my car windows
21Dec08 436pm
Is the trick about the bishop pair that worths 6.5 points ?
In this case the answer is 39.5 without the king.
I am sure I heard Josh Waitzkin or Larry Christiansen saying that the king worths 4 points.
I read some articles on ChessCafe.com that suggested that the King's fighting value was 4 pts. Of course his trading value is infinite. The same article also made the suggestion of 6.5 for the bishop pair. I think it was Dan Hiesman who wrote it.
Obviously the king is priceless, like your own life. But if the king has a points value that is not infinite what is the lowest value of all the points of the pieces?
The value of all the pieces excluding the king is 39. (I know it can be argued that the value of two bishops is worth 6.5 rather than 6. But I don’t really want to go into this as I am interested in the lowest value of all the pieces. But if we going to discuss values of the pieces, I would argue that with all pieces on the board the rook is worth less than 5 points.)
The king is worth more than all the pieces so, the lowest value of the king is 39 + 1 (39.5 is also more than 39, but so is 39.000000001 etc, and usually pieces are given whole number values. But if you said 39.5, OK I’d accept this as the king’s value as we sometimes include half values.)
So the lowest value of all of a player’s pieces is 39 + 40 = 79.
I know when you exchange pieces etc you don’t say how many points is my king worth? You can think of this as telling a simple computer program how much the king is worth, and wanting to assign the lowest value. (About 20 years ago I played a computer program that did not always recognise checkmate as the end and allowed my knight to actually take the king as it was only using simple calculations to determine its moves and exchanges! I would guess the value of the king was not made more than all the pieces.) I think 79 is the answer.
I did say I would accept two answers so what is the second answer?
This is another way of looking at the question, but I may lose you on this. The king is worth more than everything. More than the “world”. And in the world of chess everything there is all the pieces. So excluding the kings value I would say the second answer is more than the value of whites pieces + value of black’s pieces ie 39 + 39 + 1 = 79. I think again 79 is the answer.
It is not what I had in mind, but you may argue that the “world” also includes the kings so the second answer is 39 + 40 + 39 + 40 +1 = 159 even though we are only including one player’s value of the pieces! (If we include the king’s value here including the other king’s value we have a never ending value as each king would need to include the other king’s value ie an infinite value.)
This is similar to my last question.
Assuming the value of the king is not infinite, if you add all the "points" of a player's pieces eg a knight is worth 3 points, as have have two knights this is 6 points etc, how many points in total is a player's pieces worth?
Hint: this is a another trick question. and I want the lowest value all the pieces can be worth. I'll accept two answers! Answers I'll give tomorrow.