No queen vs no pawns...

If i set up a board with one side not having a queen and the other not having pawns...which side would you want?

Pawns are the sould of chess, who needs queens anyway. :p

I'd want the pawns side. Clearly. :)

I'm all up for it. I'm certain I'd win.

The side with the pawns of course.

Most piece valuation systems have the queen as worth 8 or 9 pawns. So, at least point wise, it is nearly equal.

However, since pieces cannot easily fight pawns without pawn support, stopping a well organized and defended pawn chain is going to be nearly impossible for the side without pawns.

I would like to see the same question except a queen for 2 rooks. Now THAT would be an interesting fight.

I would have thought the queen would be better. It seems like the queen should be able to use forks to pick up a fair amount of pawns early on, and if the queen gets in the middle of the charging pawns they will probably be lost too.

Oh, I thought the question was 8 pawns vs. one queen, with only those pieces and the kings on the board. Nonetheless I'm still not sure the side without pawns would be so bad. After all without pawns, finding open lines is quite easy. I would still pick the queen.

I thought he meant all the pieces with one side minus a queen and the other minus their pawns.

I think this is what he had in mind.

Would it matter much which color had the queen?

Post #7: Probably. The side with pawns will struggle much more with their development. The only plus side for the pawns is the possibility of a strong center, but even this is hard to maintain with the other side's pieces wide open ready to attack it.

I see what you are saying.

But the Nimzowitsch term 'Biting on granite' comes to mind. With no pawns to crack the structure, how would the +Q side manage  to break through?

There should still be targets, like f7 or whatever square white finds. Black will probably push some of the pawns, so some weaknesses should be created. On top of all of this white could just sacrifice a piece at some point for a few pawns.

Why don't we play by consensus against Houdini ?........set it up right now !

This is the new Chess 360. Chess is saved.

Can you post it so we can see how it was done?

Thanks.

I think I saw Q v 2 Rooks on the naughty pay-per-view last night

Thanks kh75 !

I underestimated how many weak points are in the starting position.  At first I thought pawns would be better.

Perhaps kinghunter will post this game he played out so we can see how the computer sees it.

I think pawns are winning but queen can probably easily do a perpetual and draw

Okie, so I figured out how to get Fritz to play a game on its own. Here are 2 games. In both cases, the queen won. I played out one game with white with the queen and one with black with the queen. It seems white held out a bit longer than black when it was without a queen. I seem to have lost the game where black had the queen, so here is one of the games.

There is no game with White having the queen...

Only 1 game is shown