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Subject: Re: Here's one example

Author: Robin Smith

Date: 22:00:04 08/05/02

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On August 05, 2002 at 17:50:27, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On August 05, 2002 at 12:15:32, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>
>>On August 05, 2002 at 03:10:07, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>
>>>[D]8/4rk2/1p2r3/1Pp5/2Pp4/1K1P4/2PQ4/8 w - -
>>>
>>>Crafty's evalution after 14 ply +1,56.
>>>
>>>Jouni
>>
>>Crafty 18.15 static evaluation
>>material evaluation.................   1.60
>>development.........................   0.00
>>pawn evaluation.....................  -0.04
>>passed pawn evaluation..............   0.00
>>passed pawn race evaluation.........   0.00
>>king safety evaluation..............   0.00
>>interactive piece evaluation........  -0.14
>>total evaluation....................   1.42
>>
>>
>>Crafty 18.10 static evaluation
>>material evaluation.................   0.80
>>development.........................   0.00
>>pawn evaluation.....................  -0.04
>>passed pawn evaluation..............   0.00
>>passed pawn race evaluation.........   0.00
>>king safety evaluation..............   0.00
>>interactive piece evaluation........  -0.14
>>total evaluation....................   0.62
>>
>>Apparently Bob does believe that Q+P is much better than 2R
>
>
>I believe that in most positions, unless something really unusual is
>happening, that a queen is better than two rooks, when the computer has
>the queen.  As a general rule, the queen can _always_ force a draw,
>because of the many checks it can give.  And it often finds ways to pick
>up a pawn here and there.  The exceptions occur when the rooks get doubled
>and can't be separated, but even then it is not a bad idea.
>
>I simply count a queen as equal to two rooks, period...  And in 99.9%
>of the cases, that is at least correct...

99.9%?  999 times out of 1000 the queen is stronger than two rooks??  I find
this very hard to believe, even in computer games.  In general, deciding whether
the queen is stronger or the two rooks are stronger is impossible without
knowing more, in particular knowing about the pawns and if the rooks are
protected.  If the pawns are loose and scattered and/or the rooks are loose, the
queen can do well, since the rooks can't defend them all and the queen can pick
them off.  But give the rooks some protection and connected and defendable pawns
and the rooks can win much more often than the queen will.  Perhaps what you are
seeing is an artifact of the kinds of pawn structures that arise in comp-comp
games, and not a feature of the relative value of queen versus rooks in
comp-comp games.

By the way, the original position posted is so utterly drawn that seeing it as
+1.42 is pretty funny.

Robin



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