Pawn Value: The Southern Scale
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At one time I wrote a chess engine and gave bonus points to the evaluation the further advanced pawns were. I didn't give nearly as much value as you list here, but that's really a practical choice for getting the engine to play a certain way. My biggest motivation for the pawn pushing bonus was to get the engine to push pawns in the endgame even when it didn't analyze all the way to a promotion.
Your observation is generally valid - pawns become more and more dangerous the closer they get to promoting. A pawn which is one square away from queening is indeed worth almost as much as a queen.
However a word of caution is advised here: when you were first learning chess, people told you pawn=1, knight/bishop=3, rook=5, queen=9. This scale is generally accurate, on average, in many situations. But, the main usefulness of this scale is so that when you are teaching someone to play chess you don't have to keep answering questions like "my queen can take that knight! Should I do that?" ("No, the knight is guarded so you'd lose your queen after - and that's a bad trade, refer to the points system").
You should never take those numerical values as absolute truth. The value of the pieces changes depending on the position. Pawn = 1, but doubled or isolated pawns are slightly weaker, and doubled rook pawns are horrible. Knights can be better than bishops in certain positions, bishops can be better than knights in some positions. Pawns are expendable early in the game and worth their weight in gold in an endgame. Having both of your bishops ("the bishop pair") is better than having just one bishop and a knight, and better than having 2 knights. And so on and so forth, etc., etc.
Conclusion: the numerical scale is useful for teaching beginners what trades they should consider making, which they should reject, which pieces they should protect, etc. It is also good for writing chess AI. But in your own games you should always try to find the best move given the situation on the board, and use the numerical values as nothing more than a rough guideline.
Jun 9, 2008
0
#4
The value of the pawn on the eighth would be the value of the piece it becomes. I'm not sure i'd agree with pawns being worth so much on the 6th and 7th either. If it was worth 3 by the 6th rank, then people shouldn't have a problem considering a trade of a minor piece for it, but i doubt that's true.
All the above comments have been very constructive.
Now I believe 1) the values may be rather inflated and 2) this scale may be too simplistic in the light of passed pawns, connected pawns, and especially timeline of the game.
Thank you.
A friend of mine who is an expert taught me this saying "weak pawns get weaker when you push them." Of course, "passed pawns must be pushed." So like people have said, it's all about the particular position.
Three comments
I think your scale values are too high
Emanuel Lasker pointed out that rook pawns are worth less than other pawns. He thought they weren't worth the tempo it took to capture one on the second rank.
Pawns are often far more valuable on the sixth rank than on the seventh. On the sixth it has two functions, it can help with checkmating patterns and it can threaten to queen. On the seventh it is useless as an attacker.
Jun 9, 2008
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#8
This is an interesting concept - but I think the vale of the pawn should be probability weighted to the queening row. Let's say the probability of advancing to the next row is 50% always (which it is not) - then a pawn on 7th is 4.5, on 6th is 2.25, on 5th is 1.125 on 4th is .56, etc.
Then to determine the pawns current "value" you would have to determine its "expected" position. Perhaps you could do something with this - but I suspect my model is too simple too...
Jun 9, 2008
0
#9
Also, some pawns on certain files can be held up and some cant, and some can keep you out of checkmate on the 7th row, and some cant...that has "value"
tourdeforcex wrote:
All the above comments have been very constructive.
Now I believe 1) the values may be rather inflated and 2) this scale may be too simplistic in the light of passed pawns, connected pawns, and especially timeline of the game.
Thank you.
I think it's hard not to oversimplify chess, especially when trying to pigeonhole it into a summation that can be read and understood by the masses. The term "Exception to the rule" seems to be the biggest rule in chess. We can understand basic principles, but it's when we learn how and when to go against those principles that we are really starting to learn chess.
This thread is an interesting read, I'm glad you posted, yours and other's posts are very interesting.
Your idea is reasonable but I'm not qualified to comment on what the scale values should be. A problem I see is the difference between a connected pawn and one not.
This scale works for a isolated passed pawn, however not for others. An unpassed pawn on the 6th is actually worthless as it is about to be captured by an opponent pawn.
Thank you for all your posts.
Rethinking back to my analysis: I believe this scale is very limited and may only be applicable in the arena of endgames where multiple minor pieces and pawns have been taken. As pointed out earlier, pawns become much more powerful in the endgames.
Now I can dedicate my energies into factoring in passed, unpassed, connected pawns or to my academics... or toward the forces of good.. *looks into the distance*
Please continue the discussion. The input is very stimulating.
This has been a very helpful post. I'm a newer(ish) player and I'm currently in a game that is entering the endgame. I just sacrificed a bishop to create a passed pawn on the 6th row that my opponent has very little ability to defend. It would not have occurred to me (having been taught the piece values) to do that earlier in my playing. Up to this point, a passed pawn was to me just the byproduct of other moves and working to create one is clearly a valuable tactic. Thank you for the thread. I have also much enjoy the civilized and productive tone of all involved.
In my next post, I'll be sure to mention my politics and religion. Lol. Not.
Again, putting all positional nuances aside, I'd like to expand tr8drboi's philosophy a bit. If a pawn on the 8th rank is worth a queen (say 9 pts), on the 2nd it's worth 1 (the default value), you could diminish the excess value by 50% for each row:
8th: 9 pts
7th: 5 pts
6th: 3 pts
5th: 2 pts
4th: 1.5 pts
3rd: 1.25 pts
2nd: 1 pt
This yield a very acceptable scale. It also backs the though that two connected pawns on the 6th row are worth a rook (6 > 5.65 pts).
I suppose support pawns could give a relative variation as well.
Fun ideas, even if only theoretical.
Best regards
A friend and I formulated the Southern Scale in the midst of an analysis of a chess game we had played. We named it in honor of the dormitory we resided in.
The Southern Scale assigns relative point values to a pawn depending on its rank. Of course, this is merely a heuristic--it does not include necessary complexities such as position, strategy, tactics, and at what point the game is.
And thus we have:
During the game, I had realized that 1) the value of a pawn should increase as it moves down the board, 2) the final value should be the point value of a queen as it has the potential to promote to one, and 3) the increase in value is non-linear.
The value assigned to a pawn on the seventh rank is 5 as both myself and my opponent were willing to station a rook on the final rank to prevent the pawn promotion in our endgames. The same logic applies to the sixth rank--our willingness to plant a bishop or a horse in front of the advancing pawn. My friend and I decided the value of a pawn on the fifth rank should be 1.5 as the value assigned must lie between 3 and 1 but closer to 1.
I am very much a chess amateur and I have not studied very much. If there exists literature on this already, I would be very happy to be informed of it. Regardless, please post to let me know of your thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of the Scale. Do you think it has much validity? Would it be a useful heuristic in actual gameplay? Proposed amendments or changes in value?
Thank you very much!