Author: Don Dailey
Date: 14:40:21 06/10/98
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On June 10, 1998 at 14:09:08, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >On June 10, 1998 at 12:59:52, Johanes Suhardjo wrote: > >>Is a bad bishop only the one behind the pawns with the same square >>color? Is the one in front of the pawns not bad? > >This is an extremely hard question. > >A bad bishop is a bishop that can't participate fully, because of the >pawn structure, usually your own pawns and not the opponent's. > >I have seen a bishop be bad because exactly one friendly pawn is >inhibiting the bishop. > >I have seen bishops that are excellent even though many friendly pawns >are on its color, this is usually the bishop in front of the pawns case >you mention. > >I think that this is one area where humans have put a label on something >without really having a firm definition of what they are describing. >There are cases where a human would say, "that bishop is bad", but you >can make minor changes to the pawn structure, the bishop's location, the >other minor pieces on the board, or the general tactical situation, and >the bishop suddenly becomes a monster. > >bruce Yep, there is no strict definition of a bad bishop. But here is how my chess program defines it, you can take this with a "grain of salt." Consider only the bishop and the pawns. Does the bishop have at least one way to move to the 6th rank? If not, cilkchess considers it bad. Not perfect but a reasonable definition. In one tournament we lost our bishop because it was actually "bad" but on the opponents half of the board. It was trapped behind his pawns. We eventually found the best way to loose it with counterplay and won the game. But this example showed that there is no perfect definition. But the "bad bishop" is not quite the same as a bishop lacking mobility. Our bishop was not "bad" in this sense. The classical definition is that your bishop is highly restricted behind a pawn on e3 or d3 (if you are white.) It can be bad in other cases but I think this is the common case. It's more a statement of it being undeveloped, and very difficult to get developed. - Don
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