Forget about those points. „Once upon a time“ those points have been attributed to the pieces to estimate their value: Minor pieces 3 points (pawn units) Rook 5 pts. and the Queen 9 pts. But when playing seriously chess you’ll soon learn that this method doesn’t work anymore. In some positions 3 minor pieces are superior to a queen and a rook is normally less worth than one minor piece and 2 pawns. So it’s always a matter of space and time which is decisive for the real value of a piece. So you never can say: I’m 6 points ahead so I should win. If ever you end up in an ending with 2 knights and king vs. the king (this is a draw) those 6 points are worthless.
I'm going to disagree with everyone else in this little thread. Knowing those point values, the real ones, not the simplified ones, is very important. Knowing this can let you decide if you have a material advantag or not, if the answer is yes then you can trade like pieces to help retain the advantage.
So, we base this system off the pawn unit.
P=1 (As a side note, a pawn on the a or h file si worth 15% less than another pawn)
A Bishop or Knight have a base value of 3.25 this is a value with half of the pwans on the board. For every pawn above 8 that is on the board, ass 1/16 to the knight and take it form teh bishop. For every pawn less than 8 left, take 1/16 away from the knight and give it to the bishop.
A rook is worth 5 pawns. Now, based on the average value of a bishop/knight, we can conclude that trading a Minor piece (bishop or knight) for a rook leaves you up 1.75 pawns. This is called the exchange.
A Queen is worth 9.25 points. Since she moves on the diagonal like the bishop she gains 1/32 of a point for every pawn off the board.
Now, you can evaluate MOST situations. As others commented these are general rules, not absolutes. You should always evaluate each position independantly. A great read on material imbalance si the lesson "Three for the Lady" is a very good book title "best Lesson of a Chess Coach" by Sunil Weemramantry.
Well I've not heard of such a complicated scheme as Razor2007's, but that one does make a little more sense than the standard 3/5/9 thing.
Having said that, I'd have to weigh in with the 'look at the actual position' side of this. Points may be a handy abstraction, but when your King is smothered under two pawns, points aren't worth the mental gymnastics they're printed on.
Originally posted by razor2007I don't know where you got this point scale but though it has sensible deviations from the standard 1,3,5,9 it also has dubious ones.
I'm going to disagree with everyone else in this little thread. Knowing those point values, the real ones, not the simplified ones, is very important. Knowing this can let you decide if you have a material advantag or not, if the answer is yes then you can trade like pieces to help retain the advantage.
So, we base this system off the pawn unit.
P=1 (A ...[text shortened]... r the Lady" is a very good book title "best Lesson of a Chess Coach" by Sunil Weemramantry.
Per example that an A or H pawn would be less. Such a pawn may seem to have little influence on the game because they are a bit far from the center and because you can never win with them in K+p vs K or even with the wrong Bisshop, but next to the ability they have to make knight pins less attractive (not a big deal of course) they are especially worth much when your king needs a shelter. And because they are so far to the side they are the hardest to stop when you are running with a pawn.
Besides all this the point scale is mostly a way to do a quick check if a position is materially balanced, therefor the original system is good enough and making it more complex may just have the disadvantage of people forgetting it's just a guideline.
Originally posted by razor2007how about:
...A Bishop or Knight have a base value of 3.25 this is a value with half of the pwans on the board. For every pawn above 8 that is on the board, ass 1/16 to the knight and take it form teh bishop. For every pawn less than 8 left, take 1/16 away from the knight and give it to the bishop.....
A Bishop or Knight has a base value of 3.25 this is the base value and startimg value. For every pawn that is in the centre 2 columns of the board, add 0.25 to the knight. For every pawn that is in the outside two columns of the board, take .25 from the knight.
if you have bishops of both colours then get a 0.3 bonus for each of the 4 centre pawns which is missing..
All my information is from an article published in Chess Life in March 1999 by IM Larry Kaufman. It is titled "The Evaluation of Material Imbalances."
In reference to the a & h pawns are worth 15% less, "There is one case which can be treated as positional or material, namely the rook's pawn, which differs from other pawns in that it can only capture one way instead of two. Since this handicap cannot be corrected without the opponent's help, I teach my students to regard the rook's pawn as a different piece type, a crippled pawn. Database statistics indicate that it is on average worth about 15% less than a normal pawn. The difference is enough so that it is usually advantageous to make a capture with a rook's pawn, promoting it to a knights pawn, even if that produces doubled pawns and even if there is no longer a rook on the newly opened rook's file. For the rest of this article, I'll treat all pawns the same." This was quoted directly from the article.
He comments that an unpaired bishop and knight are worth the same value, within 1/50th of a pawn, this is with more than 3 pawns off the board, and more than three on. That said, the bishop is a bit better in the endgame when fighting a rook or multiple pawns, because of its larger scope.
Having 2 bihops when your opponent only ahs one is worth .5 pawns.
The average value of either knight or unpaired bishop came out about 3.14 pawns. This value is a bit depressed by the inclusion of endings with no other pieces, as in such endings the bishop is worth only about 2½ pawns and the knight even less, partly because the minor piece side cannot win if its last pawn is exchanged. As long as there are other pieces on the board (so minimum mating material is not a major issue), the minor piece is worth about 3¼ pawns.
Now let's move on to discussing the Exchange (rook for knight or unpaired bishop). My research puts its average value squarely at 1¾ pawnsI note for the record that the authors who put the Exchange at 1½ pawns are right on the money if they are averaging in the cases where the side down the Exchange has the bishop pair, but it think it is much better to regard the bishop pair as a separate component of the material balance.
In general, with no minor pieces traded, the Exchange value drops to 1½ pawns. But with queens and a pair of rooks gone, the Exchange is worth slightly more than its nominal value of two pawns.
When not opposed by the bishop pair, the queen is worth rook, minor piece, and 1½ pawns. queen and pawn equaling two rooks, this is only close to true with no minor pieces on the board; with two or more minors each, the queen needs no pawns to equal the rooks. three minors equal queen plus half a pawn.
A further refinement would be to raise the knight's value by 1/16 and lower the rook's value by 1/8 for each pawn above five of the side being valued, with the opposite adjustment for each pawn short of five.
The Kaufman article is statistically interesting, but of little practical value.
Consider any quality source of annotated games by strong players. How many of these annotations include the sort of numerical reasoning that Kaufman highlights? Personally, I've never seen any. It's just not the way that strong players think. GMs can, and do, evaluate material aspects without needing to go via a number system. They can think "my knight is stronger than his bishop" without a single number being used. Numbers suit computers, but not humans.
Indeed you are correct. In otb play these numbers are hard to manipulate mentally and ever harder to keep track of.
In corenpondence chess, however, I find it to be a good resource as I have all the tiem in the world to consider all the factors and decide wether or not to trade from a purely materialistic standpoint. As well, the GMs have intrisically memorized these point systems based on experience and are therefore able to calculate material imbalance.