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

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Dec 10, 2018 08:36 PM UTC:

I did recall the Kaufman study, although that I count (correctly or not) as a 'computer study' of sorts; it is relying on statistical analysis of games that may not have approached close to perfect play in a considerable number of the cases. Ideally, B vs. N studies that involve humans would include only, say, the top 200 in the world chess players playing each other. Maybe even just top 10, although the sample size would be too small I suppose for many years to come. Bobby Fischer's virtuoso exploitation of B over N in certain endgames of his is not something everyone could do, at least in his day. A statistical study of today's top engines playing each other a large number of B vs.N positions ought to be revealing, if it's ever been done. Otherwise, I had recalled that your own B vs. N study with engines playing themselves (Fairy-max?!) you wrote had a result that matched Kaufman's result, and that's from what is clearly a computer study.

Kaufman's study I admit I'm now unfamiliar with the lowest ratings of the human players in the games he included, but I was assuming the average rating of the players involved was not incredibly high (i.e. not even making it to 2500 FIDE, or minimum grandmaster, level), as I recall a very large number of games were involved in his statistical study, and any grandmasters involved apparently thus could not have played just with their own peers (or with super-grandmasters) in those games. I may have looked at a link to the study long ago, perhaps.

I'd heard or seen somewhere that Kaufman was in on giving his piece values for the programing of one engine (can't recall which), including the values that equate single B=N, so what you say about engines regularly slightly rating B's over Ns even nowadays is even more interesting to me.


Edit Form

Comment on the page SOHO Chess

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.