Author: Laurence Chen
Date: 09:58:46 10/07/99
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Its very easy to make statements, however, without any concrete proof than your statements are all hot air. There's no denial that Knights are superior in closed positions ONLY if they can get an outpost. You statement that knights are better than Bishops in closed positions is not valid. The real strength of knights is to have outpost, that's the way Steinitz formulated in his teaching. Pawns are very different from other pieces, they are cheap in value, and there are more of them than any other pieces on the chess board. Its the pawns which defines and CREATES the topology of a chess position. Pawns do not depend on other pieces to define the topology of the position. Knights are vulnerable in open positions because of their reduced mobility. If a pawn attacks a Knight you would not leave the Knight in that position, you would retreat it, of course, it's different when we are talking about a combination or sacrifice. However, given all things being equal, one would always move a knight when attacked by a pawn. Therefore the knigths do not define the topology of a chess position. Remove all the pawns from the chess board and you have an open position, create a stonewall in the chess board and you have a closed locked position. And are you going to tell me that knights are superior in this position??!! Therefore your statement is not valid, it's incorrect. It's like saying 1+1=3, and I've seen "proof" shown which demonstrates that 1+1=3, however, there's a major flaw in the proof, and mathematicians would agree that because of the flaw in the proof 1+1 cannot equal 3. To the layman, it would seem to be correct if one sees the proof, but unless the layman can see the flaw, he would readily agree that 1+1=3. And we all know that 1+1=2 !!! Laurence Chen On October 06, 1999 at 23:53:03, Marc van Hal wrote: >>In the time Philidor said that the pawns are the soul (skeleton) of chess >>I now say he was only partialy right. >>I want to improve this statement by saying pawns and knight are the soul of >>chess >>After I made my setup for a chessmaster personelety I went up giving the knight >>a higher valeu then the bischop. >>with this reason that it will use his knight more often and also makes strong >>squares for it >>The Bischop only is stronger in the very end of the endgame but in all other >>stages of the game the knight play a much bigger role in the game then the >>bischop that means about 80% of the game the knight plays a bigger role >>or you should play like a morphy stylist and brake open lines by doubeling pawns >>only then the bischop plays a bigger role in the 100% of the game >>but this is a hard style to folow and is very risky. >>Just think about it. >Something wich comes with giving a higher score ofcourse is that because you >want strong fields for your knights includes you creating closed positions and a >program only will folow these rules wich is only better then todays programs do >I not only found this out with chessmaster setting but also in my deepest >anelyzes it simply improves the positional understanding of the position it is >not so that you ever will get an endgame on the board with 2 bischops and 2 >knights most importanetly the knights will atack pawns in such a way that in >these circumstanses you be glad to change one of your bischops for the atacking >knights. >the biggest diference in the settings I used for Chessmaster was giving knight >0.1 more then a bischop but in the mean time put the mobilety higher. >And the improvement became that it played positionaly better and with real plans >instead of only moves >And like you did hear from your chess teacher a bad plan is better then no >plan. >By the way Kasparov's first lesson to beat computers was go to the end game >cause computerprograms overrate the bischops. >That the mobiletyof chessprograms must go higher is something all masters and >grandmasters will agree on too. >And I even think that Fritz5.16 preferd the knights too thats why he did want in >many cases his knights on d5/d4 though d3 d6 even in some cases is even stronger >then a rook cause it has a firm grip on the rooks. >an other case where it is good to have given the knights a higher valeu also >arises in the French game Where black has a bad bischop after d5 cause the >bischop is locked in.
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