Daily page views
|
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||
|
I've removed the assertion that these piece values were first introduced to help in computer chess; it isn't true. Many books from before the computer era include similar points systems; one example, if I recall correctly, is Howard Staunton's Chess Player's Handbook (1847). -- Camembert
I did some research, and I believe that the standard values were first formulated by the Modenese School in the 18th century (although some parts were already discussed by Pietro Carrera in 1617). I added this information with reference to their books. ( Sersunzo ( talk) 18:15, 14 July 2010 (UTC)).
In the paragraph about the shortcomings of piece values I added a few sentences that discuss the 'leveling effect' (as it was called by Ralph Betza, who, as far as I could find out, was the first to discuss it). There already is a reference to Betza's writings on piece values in the external-links section. Some of the examples for 'redundancy' at the end of the article in fact seem just an illustration of this leveling effect, where extra Queens do not nearly benefit the side that already has a Queen as much as it benefits the side with the lighter pieces, as the latter now hinder two opponent Queens. It can be easily established with the aid of computer programs that can play chess with fairy pieces that adding a piece that is similar in value to a queen, but moves differently, conveys a similar disadvantage to the side that then has two super-pieces, even though there is no 'redundancy' through having two pieces with similar moves. It thus seems to me that this redundancy concept is nothing but a red herring, and I propose to delete the mentioning of it. H.G.Muller ( talk) 07:17, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Why is the bishop pair so valuable? One explanation is that the bishop is really a more valuable piece than the knight due to its greater average mobility, but unless you have both bishops the opponent can play so as to take advantage of the fact that the bishop can only attack squares of one color. In my opinion, another reason is that any other pair of pieces suffers from redundancy. Two knights, two rooks, bishop and knight, or major plus minor piece are all capable of guarding the same squares, and therefore there is apt to be some duplication of function. With two bishops traveling on opposite colored squares there is no possibility of any duplication of function. So, in theory, rather than giving a bonus to two bishops, we should penalize every other combination of pieces, but it is obviously much easier to reward the bishop pair. It is partly for similar reasons we say to trade pieces when you are ahead; if you have two knights against one (with other pieces balanced), the exchange of knights means that you are trading a partially redundant knight for one that is not redundant.
Can we cite a writer who advocates these half-pawn deductions for doubled, isolated and backward pawns? They seem very simplistic (the degree of difficulty doubled pawns, for example, present is very much dependent on the position; in some cases they may actually constitute an advantage), and I know many chess players would disagree with them, or at least say that you can't generalise about such things, but if we can at least quote somebody reputable saying these are sensible deductions, then lets do so. -- Camembert
See Point Count Chess from Ralph Betza article (he is a chess master and an inventor of many chess variants). It says:
The basic premise is that every positional advantage is worth one-third of a Pawn. For example, if you get the Bishop-pair but get a doubled Pawn, it is an even trade; but if you get a doubled isolated Pawn on an open file, you have lost two points.
So it is not a half-pawn, but a third of a pawn. I changed the text accordingly. Andreas Kaufmann 04:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Can we have a few examples of the "many" chess engines which assign the value of 200 to the king? It seems a bit of an odd thing to do to me, and in fact, intuitively, I don't see how it can work: if you treat the king like any other piece, albeit one of immensely high value, then the computer won't stop calculating at checkmate. In some cases, it may actually willfully be checkmated because it can see that on the next move it can capture its opponent's king, thus levelling material. So you have to tell the computer that checkmate ends the game; if you get checkmated, you lose. But if you do that, why do you have to assign the king any value at all? I don't see the logic in it. But I've never programmed a chess engine, and maybe I'm missing something; as I say, if we can give examples of some engines which actually do this, then fair enough. -- Camembert
Please understand that I respect the query you are making and I believe we should be reasonably patient (if required) in waiting for a reply from the/a knowledgeable person. However, I must point-out that the current state of this article is nearly unacceptable since it variously states the value of a king in chess to be BOTH infinity and 200 points- diplomatic and contextual wording, notwithstanding. So, as soon as you determine which value is correct, the incorrect value needs to be deleted entirely. -- BadSanta
I guess it varies from source to source. In most things i've read online the king is given some value, 200 was a common one, which is why I used it. You can look at any of a variety of sources to find out about giving the king a value, almost every computer chess paper or article I've read has said something of the sort. — siro χ o
I think the 200 points actually might come from a very early chess program designed by Claude Shannon as given by these two papers, [1], [2]. This site [3] alludes to "early computer chess programs". You may be right that some of the stuff in this article belongs in the computer chess article. Perhaps this article should just be merged with Chess piece and computer chess? — siro χ o 22:23, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Incidentally, not that I want to bang on about this, but I was browsing through the Oxford Companion to Chess (1992) earlier today, and stumbled across the following in the "value of pieces" entry:
They don't give a source. Can't say I understand it still (don't think I will until we have an article that goes into the details of chess computer programming), just thought I'd mention it for curiosity value. -- Camembert 15:46, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I believe that the value of 200 for the king must be based on its value as a piece, based on pawn=100, and before the endgame. Programs usually use that because it is easier to work with integers than fractions. Therefore I think the 200 in the article should be changed to 2. (In the endgame, the king as a piece is worth 3-1/2 to 4.)
Bubba73--
Bubba73
01:40, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually that's not quite true. I checked computer chess and there it talks about assigning a value of 200 for the purposes of the game tree evaluation. It does not reflect any actual valuation, i.e. it isn't worth 200 pawns. Any value significantly higher than the sum of value of the other pieces (39) would do. It could be a 1000 for those purposes. I now agree with leaving it at 200, with a reference to computer chess to make it clearer, but I think my paragraph about Larry Evans should stay in, so I restored it.
And if the 200 figure comes from the very early program, as someone stated, then it probably was a more-or-less arbitrary figure so that the value of all pieces (200+39 = 239) will still fit in one byte of memory.
-- Bubba73 03:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
This paper by Shannon is undoubtedly the smoking gun: http://www.pi.infn.it/%7Ecarosi/chess/shannon.txt
“The formula is given only for illustrative purposes. Checkmate has been artificially included here by giving the king the large value 200 (anything greater than the maximum of all other terms would do).”
And if that isn’t clear enough, David Levy, in his book “Computer Gamesmanship”, on page 111, he is discussing Shannon’s paper: “The king is given an arbitary high value because loss of the king means loss of the game. The values 9, 5, 3, 3, and 1 for the other pieces are the rule-of-thumb values which chess players learn early … “
So there you have it. The value of 200 for the king is artificial, arbitrary, and for illustrative purposes. It has nothing to do with a king being the material equivalent of 200 pawns or 40 rooks or 22 queens plus 2 pawns, etc. It is a value that is assigned to checkmate, not to the king as a piece. Since it is possible to queen all 8 pawns, the maximum amount of material possible is 103 points. You need some value for a checkmate that is higher than that, and 200 was the next convienent round number. The reason for having a checkmate position valued more than the largest possible sum of the other pieces is so that the program will give up all of the material it has to in order to prevent mate, as well as sacrifice all of the material it needs to if it achieves checkmate.
The whole paragraph about the 200 points for the king should be removed from this article. It is properly discussed in computer chess, and essentially the same statements are already there. However, even there, it is completely misleading. I propose that this paragraph be removed from this article, since it isn’t at all relative, and that the similar material in computer chess be revised to correct it.
-- Bubba73 14:55, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
It seems that the computer values and human values for every chess piece are interchangeable UNTIL the complex and problemmatical case of the king is mentioned. People say variously it is of infinite value, beyond an exact value or impossible to value while computer programs do not overreact or underreact in gameplay with a value of appr. 200 points. For some time, this issue has caused contention amongst experts at Wikipedia who approached it from contrasting viewpoints. Finally, our patient communications with one another have resulted in the right information being put into its proper place with a balanced treatment of the facts. Thanks to all! -- BadSanta
This King=200 claim was complete bulshit, and it is good that it is removed. I have been writing chess programs sinse the early eighties, and assigning a large value to the King is in fact not sufficient to make a program obey the rules for check. No matter how large the value assigned to King, it would just reply to checks with counter checks, being convinced that trading Kings is a good deal. Chess programs need to be explicitly programmed to not have the game go on after a King gets captured, and communicate that to the place that handled the previous position, so that it can be seen there that an illegal move was done, end be judged whether it is dealing with a checkmate or a stalemate. H.G.Muller ( talk) 07:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I think it's worth pointing out that in addition to the book by Larry Evans (which I haven't read), Max Euwe and Hans Kramer use a very similar value system in Vol. 1 of their "The Middlegame" (I should note that I have the "Algebraic Edition," which is a recent reprinting), the only difference being that they value both the knight and the bishop at 3 1/2. Is this worth mentioning in the article? Also, aside from its lasting popularity, what evidence is there to suggest that the "traditional" value system is more accurate? -- Gestrin 16:25, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there some sort of formula that came up with these numbers for the various pieces? Can we apply it to various fairy pieces? See the discussion on that article's talk page.-- Sonjaaa 23:03, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The bit about bishops having their relative piece values discounted by half due to being colorbound is very popular and widespread misinformation.
In fact, the reason knights have appr. the same value as bishops in chess, although purely in terms of movement a light-spaced OR dark-spaced bishop can reach far more squares on an ideal, otherwise-empty board is that in practice, the board is never empty. It can get close to empty in a very tight endgame but is 50% full at the start of the game. So, the bishops, being of unlimited range, must be discounted to a realistic value compared to the knights, being of limited, 1-leap range for which getting blocked in the full extent of movement (except by friendly pieces) is not a problem.
I removed the following (much of which I wrote or revised):
In some computer chess programs, the king is assigned an artificial value such as 200 points – an arbitrary value higher than the sum of all other pieces plus positional factors. This ensures that the computer will value checkmate over all exchanges or sacrifices. See the discussion about Shannon's chess program at Claude Elwood Shannon for a more complete description.
In evaluating a position, computer programs will typically make further adjustments to this score according to various positional factors. For example, 1/3 of a point may be subtracted for doubled pawns, isolated pawns and backward pawns, fractions of points may be added for possession of open files, and so on. For most humans, such positional evaluation is done without reference to a numerical score.
because it is about positional factors and evaluation functions in chess programs, and not directly about the topic of the article. This is basically covered in computer chess, Claude Elwood Shannon, and evaluation function. Bubba73 (talk), 23:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
~~Hi. I changed "if the pawn on a6 was" to "if the...were". Was is wrong because the condition is contrary to fact. Also, "values changes" is embarrassing. I haven't changed that.~~
I have removed the following:
Because, well, Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and because such discussion belongs on the page for Capablanca chess or Gothic chess because it is only of interest for people interested in Chess variants. Just to clarify 15:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I restored the material from grandmasters Lev Alburt and Nikolay Krogius again. It is cited in their book, which is referenced. It is not my opinion, it is their opinion. Bubba73 (talk), 00:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I expanded Staunton's valuation of the pieces a bit from a Project Gutenberg text. Unfortunately I might not have it quite right—the Gutenberg text is a 1930 reprint of an 1870 original with additional material from unnamed "Modern Authorities". I think it unlikely that the piece values material from pages 30–31 of that text were altered from Staunton's work, but I can't be sure. Quale 00:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
There are citation requests for the value of the bishop given by Fischer and the values given by the USCF. I don't know of any source for the USCF statement - it may be bogus. Does anyone know where that came from? I've read the Fischer value of the bishop, but I don't remember where. It might be in 60 Memorable Games or something. Does anyone know?
Bubba73
(talk),
20:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, since it has been unsourced for over two months, I deleted it (see aboove):
The values used by the United States Chess Federation are: citation needed
I think I understand what the text that was added and removed today means. In the early program, they put a value of 200 points on the king and then did not have to program in the rules about moving into check and checkmate. Since 200 points is higher than the sum of all other material, this would be an easy way to have the program avoid checkmate at all costs (and also avoid moving into check). However, by the requirement to move (not exactly what zugzwang means, this method will not work correctly for stalemate positions - the program would avoid getting itself stalemated. Bubba73 (talk), 02:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe this page should be moved to "chess piece point values" since it is about systems of values, not about the values individually (which would be nonsensical). 91.107.140.122 ( talk) 20:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Hey, I'm just wondering to what extent we want to list every valuation that was ever suggested. What I mean is that, for instance, there are so many valuations that all look the same (Evans, Euwe, Fischer, "early Soviet chess program", another popular chess system for example are pretty much all the same). I'm just thinking it's either too crowded for little reason, or the format clearly needs reworking.
Actually, I'm thinking of two alternate ways of presenting all this:
Because seriously... some stuff just isn't worth mentioning with such emphasis. Seigneur101 ( talk) 02:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
How about
Source | Date | Comment | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3.1 | 3.3 | 5 | 7.9 | 2.2 | Sarratt? | 1813 | (rounded) pawns vary from 0.7 to 1.3 |
3.05 | 3.5 | 5.48 | 9.94 | Philidor | 1817 | also given by Staunton in 1847 | |
3½ | 3½ | 5½ | 10 | Euwe | 1944 | ||
3½ | 3½ | 5 | 8½ | 4 | Lasker | 1947 | kingside rooks and bishops are valued more, queenside ones less |
3 | 3+ | 5 | 9 | Horowitz | 1951 | The bishop is "3 plus small fraction" | |
3¼ | 3½ | 5 | 10 | Evans | 1958 | Earlier in the book Evans gave 3¼ for the bishop | |
3 | 3¼ | 5 | 9 | Fischer | 1972 | ||
3¼ | 3¼ | 5 | 9¾ | Kaufman | 1999 | Add ½ point for the bishop pair | |
3.2 | 3.33 | 5.1 | 8.8 | Berliner | 1999 | plus adjustments for openness of position, rank & file | |
3½ | 3½ | 5 | 9½ | early Soviet chess program ( Soltis 2004:6) | |||
3 | 3 | 4½ | 9 | another popular system ( Soltis 2004:6) | |||
2.4 | 4 | 6.4 | 10.4 | 3 | Gik | based on average mobility; Soltis pointed out problems |
with the king value and date filled in only if appropriate. Assume 1 for the pawn. Bubba73 (talk), 21:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
On the queen=9, rook=5, bishop=3, knight=3, pawn=1 scale, how can we define the values of the princess and empress?? (See fairy chess piece for what these are.) Georgia guy ( talk) 20:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Now curious on how you would value a triple-compound piece: the amazon is R+N+B. I guess 11.5, maybe 12 because it can hunt down and mate a lone king by itself? How would you value the nightrider (which is to the knight what the queen is to the king, making an unlimited number of knight moves in one direction?) (I guess 5.) Double sharp ( talk) 09:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Clarification needed: 1st and 2nd tables: What thinks/says Berliner about rank 7? 3rd table "advanced pawns": There is no advanced pawns with rank 4... Value "x"? Rank 7? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.110.99.238 ( talk) 15:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
What the hell are wrong with the citations on this page? Someone should look into this, they're all f**ked up.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.236.175.178 ( talk • contribs)
Like in the endgame the king has a value about 3 pawns, — Preceding unsigned comment added by WorldofTanks ( talk • contribs) 12:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
We recently had a tournament at the high school I attend. The time limit was one hour for the game, but that was based in real time. We didn't use the game clock.
At the end of the hour, and only in draws under that rule, we used the standard scoring system to break ties. Whoever had more points on the board moved on. If there was a tie, it was treated like any other draw and they replayed the match.
The tournament never reached a point where the rule was enforced, and I don't expect it to catch on, but hey, the system found a way into a rule book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.177.20 ( talk) 22:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
The article claims that some computer programs value the king at 1,000,000,000 points. Says who? Since programs usually use centipawns, that's 100 billion centipawns, a value that won't fit in a 32-bit unsigned integer. I think this claim is an exaggeration, which is to say false. One million would be plausible, since there's absolutely no point in using a billion here. No possible material advantage combined with any conceivable position evaluation advantage could come within six orders of magnitude of a billion. Quale ( talk) 19:53, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
Given that the princess (B+N) and empress (R+N) are the two fairy pieces everyone invents and puts in their chess variants (including Capablanca), I wonder if there have yet been enough variants made that people have said anything about their values in reliable sources. It seems more likely than for any other fairy pieces (although if we're talking about historical variants too, there most certainly are historical values for shatranj). I would personally put the princess at 8 pawns and the empress at 9 pawns, assuming both are living on an 8×8 board, but that is only my OR. Double sharp ( talk) 14:22, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Chess piece relative value. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
I am the author of "True Chess: The American Revolution" and I was looking to making what I call "The Formula" known to all who would search wikipedia for answers concerning chess piece values. In my book I reveal "The Formula" and I show how it all makes sense. I demonstrate how the value of the squares and the value of the pieces come together. I demonstrate in irrefutable fashion how chess is an expression of Pi. All who are interested in knowing the value of the pieces should have access to this information. I am new to editing and I don't look forward to making another attempt at it. The potential value of the pieces are pawns = .942 knights = 2.512 bishops = 4.082 rooks = 4.396 queens = 8.478 kings have a fighting strength value of 2.512. The squares = .314 each times 64 = 20.096 One queen, one rook, one bishop, one knight, and one pawn = 20.410. The difference between 20.410 and 20.096 is .314 Please contact me and help me add this information to the Chess piece relative value page or help me create the Chess piece potential value page. Don't do it for me do it for the people who are seeking information. MyDiametrical ( talk) 18:18, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
You are not new to editing here, as you have been trying to add this information since October 2015. If you have reliable sources (other than a self-published book), please feel free to add the information. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Attract and Repel ‖ 17:06, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Apart from the religious-sounding decision to express everything as a multiple of 0.314 (which is meaningless, since only the value ratios matter--and which, incidentally, does not equal pi), it seems you're just counting the maximum squares a piece can reach within 1 move under ideal circumstances. This is a common starting point for people trying to measure piece value, but vast amounts of empirical evidence show it to be a rather poor estimate of practical value. This is not surprising, since it ignores significant information about the pieces--for instance, your system assigns the same value to a special rook that can jump over pieces as to a normal rook that can be blocked, where clearly the jumping rook is strictly more powerful and therefore must have a higher value.
Most sophisticated methods for calculating piece value seem to rely principally on some sort of weighted average of the number of squares that can be reached under a range of different circumstances (rather than simply taking the maximum). This usually gives values pretty close to the empirical values, but it's still far from perfect agreement, and additional corrective rules are often applied to fine-tune values. Antistone ( talk) 08:04, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Could it be possible to transfer this analogy to other games, such as Battleships ? 80.43.1.195 ( talk) 19:37, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
We need a reference for the Stockfish valuations. I couldn't find it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:06, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Presenting Stockfish's "raw" material values as being representative of how pieces are typically evaluated by this engine is a case of improper original research, because it assumes without justification that the effect that the presence or absence of a piece has on other (positional) evaluation terms is zero on average. One could, for one thing, change the effective material evaluation just by uniformly shifting the values of
piece-square tables. As another illustration, if the engine gives a bonus for having the bishop pair but doesn't penalize its absence (and by the same amount), then that means a bishop is on average valued more than its baseline value.
Unless someone comes up with evidence that Stockfish's authors have been going out of their way to neutralize the bias material has on other evaluation terms (and there is no reason to do so from a performance standpoint), I will remove the Stockfish figures. --
Dissident (
Talk)
22:06, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
I have added a citation needed flag to the sentence describing Betza's 'leveling effect'. So far as I know he uses the term only to mean that a defended lower value piece is not generally worried by an attack by a higher valued piece, but usually a defended higher value piece if attacked by a lower valued piece must move (and similar considerations). This is not the meaning ascribed.
I've also removed the comment about three queens losing badly to seven knights because firstly there was no citation and I don't see it in Betza's page and secondly it's false; the queens win 90% of the time usually very quickly. -- Martin Rattigan ( talk) 22:09, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
The alternative valuations table says "Lasker adjusts some of these depending on the starting positions". However, it's not clear which Lasker, Emanuel or Edward, is being referred to. Both Laskers are mentioned in the article. On the one hand, since the previous reference to Lasker (and the only other one in that table) refers to Emanuel, one would suspect that the "Lasker adjusts" statement refers to Emanuel. On the other hand, the date for this valuation is given as 1947, at which time Emanuel was dead but Edward was still alive. This would tend to point to Edward for this valuation.
Which is it? Riordanmr ( talk) 20:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
This edit created decimals, with the edit summary: "Merged fractions into a unitary decimal system...}
This edit reverted to fractions, with this edit summary: "Not an improvement"
I reverted the last one, but I'd like to see what others think.
What do we really want? I don't know if there is any standard way, and I've seen both used. The UCSF shows a decimal system. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 02:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
The endgame value of a pawn maybe different than one because of possible promotion to other pieces. 194.153.110.5 ( talk) 16:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
His channel isn't even primarily focused on chess. This is essentially the same naive mobility-based analysis as that by Gik, with all the same caveats as pointed out by Soltis. Youtube is not a credible source for anything, it's a self-publishing site where anyone can say anything they want. MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 23:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
Daily page views
|
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||
|
I've removed the assertion that these piece values were first introduced to help in computer chess; it isn't true. Many books from before the computer era include similar points systems; one example, if I recall correctly, is Howard Staunton's Chess Player's Handbook (1847). -- Camembert
I did some research, and I believe that the standard values were first formulated by the Modenese School in the 18th century (although some parts were already discussed by Pietro Carrera in 1617). I added this information with reference to their books. ( Sersunzo ( talk) 18:15, 14 July 2010 (UTC)).
In the paragraph about the shortcomings of piece values I added a few sentences that discuss the 'leveling effect' (as it was called by Ralph Betza, who, as far as I could find out, was the first to discuss it). There already is a reference to Betza's writings on piece values in the external-links section. Some of the examples for 'redundancy' at the end of the article in fact seem just an illustration of this leveling effect, where extra Queens do not nearly benefit the side that already has a Queen as much as it benefits the side with the lighter pieces, as the latter now hinder two opponent Queens. It can be easily established with the aid of computer programs that can play chess with fairy pieces that adding a piece that is similar in value to a queen, but moves differently, conveys a similar disadvantage to the side that then has two super-pieces, even though there is no 'redundancy' through having two pieces with similar moves. It thus seems to me that this redundancy concept is nothing but a red herring, and I propose to delete the mentioning of it. H.G.Muller ( talk) 07:17, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
Why is the bishop pair so valuable? One explanation is that the bishop is really a more valuable piece than the knight due to its greater average mobility, but unless you have both bishops the opponent can play so as to take advantage of the fact that the bishop can only attack squares of one color. In my opinion, another reason is that any other pair of pieces suffers from redundancy. Two knights, two rooks, bishop and knight, or major plus minor piece are all capable of guarding the same squares, and therefore there is apt to be some duplication of function. With two bishops traveling on opposite colored squares there is no possibility of any duplication of function. So, in theory, rather than giving a bonus to two bishops, we should penalize every other combination of pieces, but it is obviously much easier to reward the bishop pair. It is partly for similar reasons we say to trade pieces when you are ahead; if you have two knights against one (with other pieces balanced), the exchange of knights means that you are trading a partially redundant knight for one that is not redundant.
Can we cite a writer who advocates these half-pawn deductions for doubled, isolated and backward pawns? They seem very simplistic (the degree of difficulty doubled pawns, for example, present is very much dependent on the position; in some cases they may actually constitute an advantage), and I know many chess players would disagree with them, or at least say that you can't generalise about such things, but if we can at least quote somebody reputable saying these are sensible deductions, then lets do so. -- Camembert
See Point Count Chess from Ralph Betza article (he is a chess master and an inventor of many chess variants). It says:
The basic premise is that every positional advantage is worth one-third of a Pawn. For example, if you get the Bishop-pair but get a doubled Pawn, it is an even trade; but if you get a doubled isolated Pawn on an open file, you have lost two points.
So it is not a half-pawn, but a third of a pawn. I changed the text accordingly. Andreas Kaufmann 04:09, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Can we have a few examples of the "many" chess engines which assign the value of 200 to the king? It seems a bit of an odd thing to do to me, and in fact, intuitively, I don't see how it can work: if you treat the king like any other piece, albeit one of immensely high value, then the computer won't stop calculating at checkmate. In some cases, it may actually willfully be checkmated because it can see that on the next move it can capture its opponent's king, thus levelling material. So you have to tell the computer that checkmate ends the game; if you get checkmated, you lose. But if you do that, why do you have to assign the king any value at all? I don't see the logic in it. But I've never programmed a chess engine, and maybe I'm missing something; as I say, if we can give examples of some engines which actually do this, then fair enough. -- Camembert
Please understand that I respect the query you are making and I believe we should be reasonably patient (if required) in waiting for a reply from the/a knowledgeable person. However, I must point-out that the current state of this article is nearly unacceptable since it variously states the value of a king in chess to be BOTH infinity and 200 points- diplomatic and contextual wording, notwithstanding. So, as soon as you determine which value is correct, the incorrect value needs to be deleted entirely. -- BadSanta
I guess it varies from source to source. In most things i've read online the king is given some value, 200 was a common one, which is why I used it. You can look at any of a variety of sources to find out about giving the king a value, almost every computer chess paper or article I've read has said something of the sort. — siro χ o
I think the 200 points actually might come from a very early chess program designed by Claude Shannon as given by these two papers, [1], [2]. This site [3] alludes to "early computer chess programs". You may be right that some of the stuff in this article belongs in the computer chess article. Perhaps this article should just be merged with Chess piece and computer chess? — siro χ o 22:23, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)
Incidentally, not that I want to bang on about this, but I was browsing through the Oxford Companion to Chess (1992) earlier today, and stumbled across the following in the "value of pieces" entry:
They don't give a source. Can't say I understand it still (don't think I will until we have an article that goes into the details of chess computer programming), just thought I'd mention it for curiosity value. -- Camembert 15:46, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I believe that the value of 200 for the king must be based on its value as a piece, based on pawn=100, and before the endgame. Programs usually use that because it is easier to work with integers than fractions. Therefore I think the 200 in the article should be changed to 2. (In the endgame, the king as a piece is worth 3-1/2 to 4.)
Bubba73--
Bubba73
01:40, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually that's not quite true. I checked computer chess and there it talks about assigning a value of 200 for the purposes of the game tree evaluation. It does not reflect any actual valuation, i.e. it isn't worth 200 pawns. Any value significantly higher than the sum of value of the other pieces (39) would do. It could be a 1000 for those purposes. I now agree with leaving it at 200, with a reference to computer chess to make it clearer, but I think my paragraph about Larry Evans should stay in, so I restored it.
And if the 200 figure comes from the very early program, as someone stated, then it probably was a more-or-less arbitrary figure so that the value of all pieces (200+39 = 239) will still fit in one byte of memory.
-- Bubba73 03:21, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
This paper by Shannon is undoubtedly the smoking gun: http://www.pi.infn.it/%7Ecarosi/chess/shannon.txt
“The formula is given only for illustrative purposes. Checkmate has been artificially included here by giving the king the large value 200 (anything greater than the maximum of all other terms would do).”
And if that isn’t clear enough, David Levy, in his book “Computer Gamesmanship”, on page 111, he is discussing Shannon’s paper: “The king is given an arbitary high value because loss of the king means loss of the game. The values 9, 5, 3, 3, and 1 for the other pieces are the rule-of-thumb values which chess players learn early … “
So there you have it. The value of 200 for the king is artificial, arbitrary, and for illustrative purposes. It has nothing to do with a king being the material equivalent of 200 pawns or 40 rooks or 22 queens plus 2 pawns, etc. It is a value that is assigned to checkmate, not to the king as a piece. Since it is possible to queen all 8 pawns, the maximum amount of material possible is 103 points. You need some value for a checkmate that is higher than that, and 200 was the next convienent round number. The reason for having a checkmate position valued more than the largest possible sum of the other pieces is so that the program will give up all of the material it has to in order to prevent mate, as well as sacrifice all of the material it needs to if it achieves checkmate.
The whole paragraph about the 200 points for the king should be removed from this article. It is properly discussed in computer chess, and essentially the same statements are already there. However, even there, it is completely misleading. I propose that this paragraph be removed from this article, since it isn’t at all relative, and that the similar material in computer chess be revised to correct it.
-- Bubba73 14:55, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
It seems that the computer values and human values for every chess piece are interchangeable UNTIL the complex and problemmatical case of the king is mentioned. People say variously it is of infinite value, beyond an exact value or impossible to value while computer programs do not overreact or underreact in gameplay with a value of appr. 200 points. For some time, this issue has caused contention amongst experts at Wikipedia who approached it from contrasting viewpoints. Finally, our patient communications with one another have resulted in the right information being put into its proper place with a balanced treatment of the facts. Thanks to all! -- BadSanta
This King=200 claim was complete bulshit, and it is good that it is removed. I have been writing chess programs sinse the early eighties, and assigning a large value to the King is in fact not sufficient to make a program obey the rules for check. No matter how large the value assigned to King, it would just reply to checks with counter checks, being convinced that trading Kings is a good deal. Chess programs need to be explicitly programmed to not have the game go on after a King gets captured, and communicate that to the place that handled the previous position, so that it can be seen there that an illegal move was done, end be judged whether it is dealing with a checkmate or a stalemate. H.G.Muller ( talk) 07:28, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
I think it's worth pointing out that in addition to the book by Larry Evans (which I haven't read), Max Euwe and Hans Kramer use a very similar value system in Vol. 1 of their "The Middlegame" (I should note that I have the "Algebraic Edition," which is a recent reprinting), the only difference being that they value both the knight and the bishop at 3 1/2. Is this worth mentioning in the article? Also, aside from its lasting popularity, what evidence is there to suggest that the "traditional" value system is more accurate? -- Gestrin 16:25, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
Is there some sort of formula that came up with these numbers for the various pieces? Can we apply it to various fairy pieces? See the discussion on that article's talk page.-- Sonjaaa 23:03, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The bit about bishops having their relative piece values discounted by half due to being colorbound is very popular and widespread misinformation.
In fact, the reason knights have appr. the same value as bishops in chess, although purely in terms of movement a light-spaced OR dark-spaced bishop can reach far more squares on an ideal, otherwise-empty board is that in practice, the board is never empty. It can get close to empty in a very tight endgame but is 50% full at the start of the game. So, the bishops, being of unlimited range, must be discounted to a realistic value compared to the knights, being of limited, 1-leap range for which getting blocked in the full extent of movement (except by friendly pieces) is not a problem.
I removed the following (much of which I wrote or revised):
In some computer chess programs, the king is assigned an artificial value such as 200 points – an arbitrary value higher than the sum of all other pieces plus positional factors. This ensures that the computer will value checkmate over all exchanges or sacrifices. See the discussion about Shannon's chess program at Claude Elwood Shannon for a more complete description.
In evaluating a position, computer programs will typically make further adjustments to this score according to various positional factors. For example, 1/3 of a point may be subtracted for doubled pawns, isolated pawns and backward pawns, fractions of points may be added for possession of open files, and so on. For most humans, such positional evaluation is done without reference to a numerical score.
because it is about positional factors and evaluation functions in chess programs, and not directly about the topic of the article. This is basically covered in computer chess, Claude Elwood Shannon, and evaluation function. Bubba73 (talk), 23:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
~~Hi. I changed "if the pawn on a6 was" to "if the...were". Was is wrong because the condition is contrary to fact. Also, "values changes" is embarrassing. I haven't changed that.~~
I have removed the following:
Because, well, Wikipedia is not a soapbox, and because such discussion belongs on the page for Capablanca chess or Gothic chess because it is only of interest for people interested in Chess variants. Just to clarify 15:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
I restored the material from grandmasters Lev Alburt and Nikolay Krogius again. It is cited in their book, which is referenced. It is not my opinion, it is their opinion. Bubba73 (talk), 00:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
I expanded Staunton's valuation of the pieces a bit from a Project Gutenberg text. Unfortunately I might not have it quite right—the Gutenberg text is a 1930 reprint of an 1870 original with additional material from unnamed "Modern Authorities". I think it unlikely that the piece values material from pages 30–31 of that text were altered from Staunton's work, but I can't be sure. Quale 00:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
There are citation requests for the value of the bishop given by Fischer and the values given by the USCF. I don't know of any source for the USCF statement - it may be bogus. Does anyone know where that came from? I've read the Fischer value of the bishop, but I don't remember where. It might be in 60 Memorable Games or something. Does anyone know?
Bubba73
(talk),
20:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Well, since it has been unsourced for over two months, I deleted it (see aboove):
The values used by the United States Chess Federation are: citation needed
I think I understand what the text that was added and removed today means. In the early program, they put a value of 200 points on the king and then did not have to program in the rules about moving into check and checkmate. Since 200 points is higher than the sum of all other material, this would be an easy way to have the program avoid checkmate at all costs (and also avoid moving into check). However, by the requirement to move (not exactly what zugzwang means, this method will not work correctly for stalemate positions - the program would avoid getting itself stalemated. Bubba73 (talk), 02:40, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe this page should be moved to "chess piece point values" since it is about systems of values, not about the values individually (which would be nonsensical). 91.107.140.122 ( talk) 20:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Hey, I'm just wondering to what extent we want to list every valuation that was ever suggested. What I mean is that, for instance, there are so many valuations that all look the same (Evans, Euwe, Fischer, "early Soviet chess program", another popular chess system for example are pretty much all the same). I'm just thinking it's either too crowded for little reason, or the format clearly needs reworking.
Actually, I'm thinking of two alternate ways of presenting all this:
Because seriously... some stuff just isn't worth mentioning with such emphasis. Seigneur101 ( talk) 02:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
How about
Source | Date | Comment | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3.1 | 3.3 | 5 | 7.9 | 2.2 | Sarratt? | 1813 | (rounded) pawns vary from 0.7 to 1.3 |
3.05 | 3.5 | 5.48 | 9.94 | Philidor | 1817 | also given by Staunton in 1847 | |
3½ | 3½ | 5½ | 10 | Euwe | 1944 | ||
3½ | 3½ | 5 | 8½ | 4 | Lasker | 1947 | kingside rooks and bishops are valued more, queenside ones less |
3 | 3+ | 5 | 9 | Horowitz | 1951 | The bishop is "3 plus small fraction" | |
3¼ | 3½ | 5 | 10 | Evans | 1958 | Earlier in the book Evans gave 3¼ for the bishop | |
3 | 3¼ | 5 | 9 | Fischer | 1972 | ||
3¼ | 3¼ | 5 | 9¾ | Kaufman | 1999 | Add ½ point for the bishop pair | |
3.2 | 3.33 | 5.1 | 8.8 | Berliner | 1999 | plus adjustments for openness of position, rank & file | |
3½ | 3½ | 5 | 9½ | early Soviet chess program ( Soltis 2004:6) | |||
3 | 3 | 4½ | 9 | another popular system ( Soltis 2004:6) | |||
2.4 | 4 | 6.4 | 10.4 | 3 | Gik | based on average mobility; Soltis pointed out problems |
with the king value and date filled in only if appropriate. Assume 1 for the pawn. Bubba73 (talk), 21:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
On the queen=9, rook=5, bishop=3, knight=3, pawn=1 scale, how can we define the values of the princess and empress?? (See fairy chess piece for what these are.) Georgia guy ( talk) 20:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Now curious on how you would value a triple-compound piece: the amazon is R+N+B. I guess 11.5, maybe 12 because it can hunt down and mate a lone king by itself? How would you value the nightrider (which is to the knight what the queen is to the king, making an unlimited number of knight moves in one direction?) (I guess 5.) Double sharp ( talk) 09:52, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Clarification needed: 1st and 2nd tables: What thinks/says Berliner about rank 7? 3rd table "advanced pawns": There is no advanced pawns with rank 4... Value "x"? Rank 7? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.110.99.238 ( talk) 15:48, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
What the hell are wrong with the citations on this page? Someone should look into this, they're all f**ked up.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.236.175.178 ( talk • contribs)
Like in the endgame the king has a value about 3 pawns, — Preceding unsigned comment added by WorldofTanks ( talk • contribs) 12:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)
We recently had a tournament at the high school I attend. The time limit was one hour for the game, but that was based in real time. We didn't use the game clock.
At the end of the hour, and only in draws under that rule, we used the standard scoring system to break ties. Whoever had more points on the board moved on. If there was a tie, it was treated like any other draw and they replayed the match.
The tournament never reached a point where the rule was enforced, and I don't expect it to catch on, but hey, the system found a way into a rule book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.177.20 ( talk) 22:09, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
The article claims that some computer programs value the king at 1,000,000,000 points. Says who? Since programs usually use centipawns, that's 100 billion centipawns, a value that won't fit in a 32-bit unsigned integer. I think this claim is an exaggeration, which is to say false. One million would be plausible, since there's absolutely no point in using a billion here. No possible material advantage combined with any conceivable position evaluation advantage could come within six orders of magnitude of a billion. Quale ( talk) 19:53, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
Given that the princess (B+N) and empress (R+N) are the two fairy pieces everyone invents and puts in their chess variants (including Capablanca), I wonder if there have yet been enough variants made that people have said anything about their values in reliable sources. It seems more likely than for any other fairy pieces (although if we're talking about historical variants too, there most certainly are historical values for shatranj). I would personally put the princess at 8 pawns and the empress at 9 pawns, assuming both are living on an 8×8 board, but that is only my OR. Double sharp ( talk) 14:22, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Chess piece relative value. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 12:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
I am the author of "True Chess: The American Revolution" and I was looking to making what I call "The Formula" known to all who would search wikipedia for answers concerning chess piece values. In my book I reveal "The Formula" and I show how it all makes sense. I demonstrate how the value of the squares and the value of the pieces come together. I demonstrate in irrefutable fashion how chess is an expression of Pi. All who are interested in knowing the value of the pieces should have access to this information. I am new to editing and I don't look forward to making another attempt at it. The potential value of the pieces are pawns = .942 knights = 2.512 bishops = 4.082 rooks = 4.396 queens = 8.478 kings have a fighting strength value of 2.512. The squares = .314 each times 64 = 20.096 One queen, one rook, one bishop, one knight, and one pawn = 20.410. The difference between 20.410 and 20.096 is .314 Please contact me and help me add this information to the Chess piece relative value page or help me create the Chess piece potential value page. Don't do it for me do it for the people who are seeking information. MyDiametrical ( talk) 18:18, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
You are not new to editing here, as you have been trying to add this information since October 2015. If you have reliable sources (other than a self-published book), please feel free to add the information. --‖ Ebyabe talk - Attract and Repel ‖ 17:06, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
Apart from the religious-sounding decision to express everything as a multiple of 0.314 (which is meaningless, since only the value ratios matter--and which, incidentally, does not equal pi), it seems you're just counting the maximum squares a piece can reach within 1 move under ideal circumstances. This is a common starting point for people trying to measure piece value, but vast amounts of empirical evidence show it to be a rather poor estimate of practical value. This is not surprising, since it ignores significant information about the pieces--for instance, your system assigns the same value to a special rook that can jump over pieces as to a normal rook that can be blocked, where clearly the jumping rook is strictly more powerful and therefore must have a higher value.
Most sophisticated methods for calculating piece value seem to rely principally on some sort of weighted average of the number of squares that can be reached under a range of different circumstances (rather than simply taking the maximum). This usually gives values pretty close to the empirical values, but it's still far from perfect agreement, and additional corrective rules are often applied to fine-tune values. Antistone ( talk) 08:04, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
Could it be possible to transfer this analogy to other games, such as Battleships ? 80.43.1.195 ( talk) 19:37, 20 March 2021 (UTC)
We need a reference for the Stockfish valuations. I couldn't find it. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:06, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Presenting Stockfish's "raw" material values as being representative of how pieces are typically evaluated by this engine is a case of improper original research, because it assumes without justification that the effect that the presence or absence of a piece has on other (positional) evaluation terms is zero on average. One could, for one thing, change the effective material evaluation just by uniformly shifting the values of
piece-square tables. As another illustration, if the engine gives a bonus for having the bishop pair but doesn't penalize its absence (and by the same amount), then that means a bishop is on average valued more than its baseline value.
Unless someone comes up with evidence that Stockfish's authors have been going out of their way to neutralize the bias material has on other evaluation terms (and there is no reason to do so from a performance standpoint), I will remove the Stockfish figures. --
Dissident (
Talk)
22:06, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
I have added a citation needed flag to the sentence describing Betza's 'leveling effect'. So far as I know he uses the term only to mean that a defended lower value piece is not generally worried by an attack by a higher valued piece, but usually a defended higher value piece if attacked by a lower valued piece must move (and similar considerations). This is not the meaning ascribed.
I've also removed the comment about three queens losing badly to seven knights because firstly there was no citation and I don't see it in Betza's page and secondly it's false; the queens win 90% of the time usually very quickly. -- Martin Rattigan ( talk) 22:09, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
The alternative valuations table says "Lasker adjusts some of these depending on the starting positions". However, it's not clear which Lasker, Emanuel or Edward, is being referred to. Both Laskers are mentioned in the article. On the one hand, since the previous reference to Lasker (and the only other one in that table) refers to Emanuel, one would suspect that the "Lasker adjusts" statement refers to Emanuel. On the other hand, the date for this valuation is given as 1947, at which time Emanuel was dead but Edward was still alive. This would tend to point to Edward for this valuation.
Which is it? Riordanmr ( talk) 20:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
This edit created decimals, with the edit summary: "Merged fractions into a unitary decimal system...}
This edit reverted to fractions, with this edit summary: "Not an improvement"
I reverted the last one, but I'd like to see what others think.
What do we really want? I don't know if there is any standard way, and I've seen both used. The UCSF shows a decimal system. -- Valjean ( talk) ( PING me) 02:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
The endgame value of a pawn maybe different than one because of possible promotion to other pieces. 194.153.110.5 ( talk) 16:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC)
His channel isn't even primarily focused on chess. This is essentially the same naive mobility-based analysis as that by Gik, with all the same caveats as pointed out by Soltis. Youtube is not a credible source for anything, it's a self-publishing site where anyone can say anything they want. MaxBrowne2 ( talk) 23:11, 24 March 2024 (UTC)