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H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Sep 27, 2016 06:45 PM UTC:

OK, so a Pawn seems worth 9.1% excess score in Apothecary1, and 11.3% in Apothecary2. That is less than I see in normal or Capablanca Chess (where it is some 15%), but that makes sense in these larger games, where much more can happen before you are down to an end-game where the material advantage becomes decisive.Note that the statistical error in the score percentage will be something like 45%/sqrt(1000) ~ 1.5%, so that the difference between Apothecary1 and Apothecary2 Pawn-odds score is not really significant. In fact it is quite likely that these are the same, as both games start with approcximately the same amount of material, so close to 10%.

That means the preliminary result I got for Griffins vs Aancas, which was ~65% (15%excess score) in about 200 games corresponds to1.5 Pawn. That would make the G-A difference about 0.75 Pawn. Because the 2G-2A difference is larger than a Pawn, it might be a good idea to handicap the side with the two Griffins by a Pawn. Then the Griffins should still win, but only by about 55%.

We should keep open the possibility that Pawns are pretty 'light' in a game with so much material, i.e. that a minor is worth much more than 3 Pawns, perhaps even 6. (Even most orthodox Chess programs set the Pawn base value close to a quarter of a minor, and the rule minor = 3 Pawns really only holds for a good passer in the end-game.) What helped me very much in Capablanca Chess is to run N + P  vs R (deletion) and 2N vs R+P. These two results allow you to place the R value in the range {N+P, 2N-P} while comparing the difference of these two results with the Pawn-odds score tells you how many P the 2N-P and N+P are apart. Together that defines both the N and the R value in terms of P, without ever having to delete more than a single Pawn, and without ever getting scores larger than the Pawn-odds score. In Capablanca Chess, at least. Perhaps on this deep board 2N-R would already be near equal. (Although I really doubt that extra ranks behind the majority of the pieces in the start position would matter so much.)


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