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Subject: Re: piece values

Author: Anthony Cozzie

Date: 07:22:31 12/31/03

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On December 31, 2003 at 09:30:03, Tom Likens wrote:

>On December 31, 2003 at 07:54:37, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>
>>On December 31, 2003 at 07:53:49, Anthony Cozzie wrote:
>>
>>>On December 30, 2003 at 22:04:02, Toni wrote:
>>>
>>>>I'm thinking about the values of pieces for a chess program. I have investigated
>>>>some engines and the values they give to pieces vary. Some examples are:
>>>>
>>>>ENGINE          knight    bishop    rook    queen
>>>>Faile 1.4.4      3.1       3.25      5       9
>>>>Amy-0.8.4        3.5       3.5       5.5     11
>>>>Crafty-19.4,     3         3         5       9
>>>>Beowulf-2.2      3.2       3.25      5       9.3   (defult personality)
>>>>
>>>>I have to give values for my program and, as I'm not a strong chessplayer I
>>>>would like to know your opinion. Are these differences important? What values
>>>>should be assigned for the highest strength?. The same could be applied to score
>>>>bonuses, but the list is too large.  :-)
>>>>
>>>>Thanks
>>>>
>>>>Toni
>>>
>>>Zappa: Knight/Bishop: 3.25 Rook: 5 Queen: 9.75
>>>
>>>anthony
>>
>>
>>P.S. Do a search for Larry Kaufmann's article.
>
>These are the similar to the values used by Djinn (a pawn is 1).  I let the
>position dictate
>wheter the bishop or knight is stronger.  The only difference is I give the
>queen a value
>of 9.50.  I set up an Excel spreadsheet comparing the values of various piece
>and pawn
>trades and set the values based on what I thought  were good/bad trades.  For
>example,
>R+4 pawns should be less than the value of a queen,  R+P should be less than the
>value
>of two minor pieces, 3 minors > queen etc.   It was interesting to see
>Kaufmann's values
>come out so close.
>
>regards,
>--tom

I really think the queen is almost as strong as the two rooks or 3 minors [very
close].  Kaufmann does suggest 9.5 as an OK value for the queen, though.  Crafty
implements some bad trade code where the two minors are given a ~3/4 bonus vs
the rook.  Zappa does not, and I've seen it win multiple games when it picks the
rook+outside passer against two minors.

Another Kaufman idea that Zappa implements is scaling the values of the pieces
wrt # pawns on the board.  With 8 pawns on the board, Zappa views a Knight as
3.4 or so and a rook as 4.7 - so it is ready to sac the exchange for a pawn and
some mild positional compensation.  OTOH, with 3-4 pawns on the board, Zappa
views a Knight as 3 and a rook as over 5.

anthony




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