Author: Laurence Chen
Date: 17:06:36 05/01/00
I fully agree with Harald Faber and Blass Uri statements that one should not believe a chess engine evaluation without checking the position, just because a chess engine post a +3.xx or +10.xx does not mean that the position is a win, it could be a DRAW. One thing thing, a very important detail they omitted, was the reason why a chess engine gives such an evaluation. To those of you who dependings a lot on chess evaluations, you must always add this FACTOR in your favorite chess engine evaluation, MATERIAL count. Yes, chess engines evaluates position based on Material VALUE, I don't know the exact value, but, I believe it is based on this scale, Pawn equals 1 point, Knights and Bishops, 3 points, Rook equals 5 points, and a Queen equals 8 points. These are rough estimates and it may vary from different engines. You should always ask why a chess engine gives a certain value, what is the material count? Using this example from another post, many chess engine will give a +4.xx evaluation for White. [D]6R1/7B/6Pk/8/5K2/8/8/3r4 w - - 0 1 Now, before you assume that White is winning, make a material count, using the scale above, one gets roughly 4 points in material count. So White is +4 points, and do you know why? It is because it has a pawn and bishop advantage. So the evaluation of the position is +4.xx because of the material advantage, however this does not mean that such material advantage can easily be converted to a win. If the evalutation of the above position was +6.xx then it would mean that White must have some type of positional advantage besides its material advantage. Correct understanding of chess engine evaluation will help one to know when the evaluation is not superficially incorrect based on material value alone. I hope this helps. Remember the old saying, the blind leads the blind, and they both fall into the ditch. So beware of this factor. Laurence
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