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Subject: Re: piece values

Author: Tom Likens

Date: 10:15:50 12/31/03

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On December 31, 2003 at 10:22:31, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>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

I've considered this but haven't done any experiments yet.  It seems
to make a lot of sense though.  Maybe I'll give this a go in my next
round of experiments.  Have you tried any self-play matches using
static vs. dynamic values in Zappa?

--tom



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