What value do you consider a king at?

this just proves that the king is very useful. Without the king the pawn could not have promoted.

I still think that the kings value is whatever value u personally choose to put it at u may see it as valuable and safeguard it some may use as they would a knight carelessly using it as a low value piece so u choose the kings value it is different for everyone

Sorry, my mistake on this, it was only until later that I figured out "invaluable" wasn't what I thought.

A mobile and active king in the endgame ( meaning generally advanced or centralized) is worth an extra minor piece unless there are still checkmate threats on the board.

the game

the game.

I've always heard it's "practical value" being the equivalent to 4 pawns.

If you consider a pieces value being equivalent to the number of squares it can attack in your opponents camp:

• A pawn attacks two squares.
• A Knight can attack eight squares, but only six in the opponents half. So it can attack 3x as many of your opponents squares as a pawn. So it's worth 3.
• Bishop is similar, in the vast majority of positions, it also attacks six squares in the opponents half, but from one central square specifically, it can attack 7. Since it can't always attack 7, it'd be wrong to class it as an outright 3.5 piece but since it could, it should also be technically worth more than 3.00. Many former World Champs eg. Kasparov, Fischer, etc have used balanced values of 3.15 to 3.25 for the Bishop.
• Rook attacks ten squares in opponents half, so it does the work of 5 pawns.
• Queen attacks 16 squares, so should technically be valued as 8 pawns, but it has unique utility that's worth an extra point, eg. the ability to individually support perpetual checks, etc.

Using this logic, this is where the Kings practical equivalent of 4 pawns comes in. A king can attack eight squares in the opponents half of the board.

Obviously the King can't be sacrificed or exchanged, so in that sense, it's invaluable.

I would say that a king is worth 1 more than a knight/bishop.

stupid question.

I'd imagine if we set up an equal minor piece endgame with a handful of pawns and the following rule: One side must never move their King, and the other side must never move their minor piece - I could see the active King side winning the majority of those games - assuming the restricted King and Minor Piece were sat on squares that didn't interfere with any potential pawn promotion.A Bishop would be fixed to one colour, so the opponent need only shift the pawns onto the opposite colour.

A Knight is a very slow piece, so would have to maneuverer a bunch of times to attack pawns that are close to one another. Especially bad if there were many pawns on both sides of the board, etc.

The King can attack both colours simultaneously, and can also blockade 2-3 pawns at a time. It's only weakness is it's slow to move, but still arguably less awkward than a Knight.

It'd obviously have to be an endgame situation for the Kings value to be fairly recognised since it's a constant liability if there's queens / enough attacking pieces on the board to checkmate it.

In the beginning it's basically zero, since you have to protect it and making it attack is very impractical.

As the game goes on, it gains value as an actual piece. I'd say around 2.5-3.5

infinity, if you lose it, you lose the game.

I'd value the king as somewhere between 2 and 4, depending on the situation.

The king's mobility (one square in any direction) can be quite useful, and would put the king at about a 4, if it were a piece, IMO.

But the king's own movement can be restricted by mating nets and threats, hampered by checks, and can be forced into tempi-losing sequences. This weakens the king compared to other pieces, so I'd knock it down to a 2.

So I'd say it depends on the current state of the board. If the board has enough pieces to harass the king, I'd say it's closer to a 2.

But if the board has mostly cleared and the king is in very little danger of being threatened, I'd put it at around a 4.