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H.G.Muller wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2008 02:37 PM UTC:

At the risk of being accused of serial posting: I happened to stumble on
the exact source of Larry Kaufman's piece values. They game from a
13-line posting he made off-hand in the Rybka forum, (
http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=1986;pg=3 ,
near the bottom) when the topic of piece value of the Capablanca pieces
came up. So basically just educated guessing, done without any experience
in the game itself, just experience borrowed from normal Chess, without
any experimental input.

Does that make him 'incurably stupid'? Most certainly not! In fact,
given the virtual absense of any data to go on, and that he spend only a
few minutes on it, he did a magnificent job, displaying excellent
intuition. The fact that the result of an educated guess is off does not
make someone stupid. It is in the nature of guessing. Stupid would be to
claim that such a guess represents a 100% certain truth. As to the
'incurable', that is really an uncalled for reproach. Such an
accusation
could only be made to stick on a person that would persist in a guess
when
faced with EVIDENCE to the contrary. Larry Kaufman was never faced with
any evidence whatsoever, and I am pretty sure he would applaud it
enthousiastically if he was. I even put it to the test, by posting my
empirical piece values there. Let's hope he sees them and comments! 8-)

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Comments

Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80)

💡📝Hans Aberg wrote on Sat, May 3, 2008 04:43 PM UTC:

H.G.Muller:
| But the point is that this does not alter the piece values.

Right, though that might be just a preferred way to structure theory because it suits human thinking. Essentially, define contexts, and attach values to them. First define piece values in nutralk settings. Then observe that the bishop pair gets an added value. Then try to figure out values for good and poor bishops. And so on. By contrast, computers tend to be very poor at handling such contexts, so other methods might be suitable for programs.

Derek Nalls wrote on Sat, May 3, 2008 03:26 PM UTC:

Muller:

You have my best regards toward your worthwhile effort to publish your
empirical, statistical method for obtaining the material values of pieces
in the ICGA Journal.  My assessment is that it will surely be a much
better paper than the junk [name removed] published in the same journal
regarding piece values.

[The above has been edited to remove a name and/or site reference. It is
the policy of cv.org to avoid mention of that particular name and site to
remove any threat of lawsuits. Sorry to have to do that, but we must
protect ourselves. -D. Howe]

H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, May 3, 2008 03:22 PM UTC:

Sure, this is what people do and have done for ages. It is well known that the advantage of having the move is worth 1/6 of a Pawn, (corresponding in normal Chess to a white score of 53-54%) and that, by inference, wasting a full move is equivalent to 1/3 of a Pawn.

But the point is that this does not alter the piece values. It just adds to them, like every positional advantage adds to them. In my test the advantage of having the lead move is neutralized by playing every position both with white to move and black to move.

💡📝Hans Aberg wrote on Sat, May 3, 2008 11:50 AM UTC:

H.G.Muller:
| As piece values are only useful as strategic guidelines for quiet
| positions, they cannot be sensitive to who has the move.

At the beginning of the game, white is thought to have a slight advantage, and the first task of black will be attempting to neutralize that. And it might be possible set a picee value to that positional advantage, just as when reasoning in terms of getting positional compensation for a sacrifice. Somewhat less han a pawn, perhaps. If one knows about the black/white winning statistics, one might be able to set a value on it that way. It may not be usable for a computer program as it does not change sides, but only computes the relative values of moves.

H. G. Muller wrote on Sat, May 3, 2008 10:34 AM UTC:

As piece values are only useful as strategic guidelines for quiet positions, they cannot be sensitive to who has the move. A position where it matters who has the move is by definition nont quiet, as one ply later that characteristic will have essentially changed. So at the level of piece-value strategies, Chess is a perfectly symmetric game.

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