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Subject: Re: Material Values

Author: David Rasmussen

Date: 00:52:29 01/21/02

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On January 21, 2002 at 00:23:08, Russell Reagan wrote:

>On January 20, 2002 at 16:21:02, David Rasmussen wrote:
>
>>On January 20, 2002 at 15:38:45, martin fierz wrote:
>>
>>>On January 20, 2002 at 09:01:50, David Rasmussen wrote:
>>>
>>>>There must be a value system of material that takes care of all special cases.
>>>>
>>>>1,3,3,5,9:
>>>>
>>>>Has the following problems:
>>>>3 pawns for bishop or knight is almost always a bad idea.
>>>in the middlegame, yes, in the endgame no.
>>>
>>>>2 knights/bishops for rook and pawn is almost always a bad idea.
>>>in the middlegame yes, in the endgame, maybe not, if the rook has a passer.
>>>
>>>>2 rooks for queen is often not a good idea.
>>>not at all, except if the queen can mate you.
>>>
>>>>3 knights/bishops for a queens is often not a good idea. Then again, often it is
>>>>:)
>>>it is a good idea more often than not.
>>>
>>>all these things are heavily dependent on the rest of the material on the board.
>>>i don't think you have a chance...
>>>
>>>cheers
>>>
>>>  martin
>>
>>I am not talking about things that depend on a lot of other stuff. Evaluation
>>should take care of this. I am talking about Crafty that explicitly checks for
>>some material special cases _and nothing else on the board_, and decides if it
>>should give a penalty/bonus. I say that I think it can be done with the values
>>alone. Why not?
>>
>>/David
>
>You cannot assign one set of values to the chess pieces and use that for
>material evaluation. Material evaluation changes depending not only upon which
>of the other pieces are on the board, but upon positional factors. Accurately
>assessing material value can only be done by assessing those positional values
>along with the other material on the board (which would be one complicated
>algorithm), or by breaking material evaluation down into it's atomic parts,
>which I believe is the correct way to do it. You have to evaluate chess upon the
>elements of the game, which are determined by the rules of the game. Deep
>insight into this area is the only way to allow for an efficient evaluation of
>any element of a chess position.
>
>Russell

For the 1000th time... I am not suggesting to drop any complex evaluation terms,
and just have magical material values. I am suggesting to use other values than
1,3,3,5,9. If you don't believe that material values are important why do you
use 1,3,3,5,9 (or whatever)? If you _do_ think it matters, why do you think
1,3,3,5,9 is magical?

/David



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