Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Jeremy Lennert wrote on Mon, Apr 18, 2011 06:50 AM UTC:
Adding the null move to your King is certainly very helpful in a number of endgames...but so is having virtually any extra piece. For example, I suspect a Wazir added to either the K+R vs. K0 or K+P vs. K0 endgames would easily turn them back into wins (probably even if you crippled it by, say, removing its sideways capture; though I have not worked it out). Based on Betza's theory, a Wazir should be worth around 1.5 Pawns at most (probably less).

And those endgames show the null move at its strongest; averaged over the course of the whole game, is it worth even a quarter that much? A tenth?

On the reverse side, adding a null move to your King is obviously more than enough compensation for having your ENTIRE ARMY saddled with the 'cannot lose a tempo' weakness due to switching. That's regardless of the size of your army, which shows that giving the weakness to multiple pieces can't possibly be linear, but still, on a single piece it has to be worth only a tiny fraction of the null move.

So at a wild guess, we're talking about maybe a one centipawn penalty for the switching weakness, or even less? That's noise.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 3)

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.