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Grasshopper. Moves along queenlines to first square after jumped over piece.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Oct 15, 2008 06:50 AM UTC:
Play-testing shows that in real games, the Grasshopper is a quite weak piece. Starting from a setup

r n b q k b n r
. g . . . . g .
p p p p p p p p
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
P P P P P P P P
. G . . . . G .
R N B Q K B N R

to prevent that a Grasshopper has immediate forks on opponent back-rank pieces, and thus cn be traded for something more valuable, it turns out that deleting the Grasshoppers of one side, and a single Knight on the other side, leads on average to a light victory of the Grasshoppers, while deleting a single Bishop in stead of a Knight resuts in a light advantage of the side with the Bishop pair.

If we adopt the Larry-Kaufman values of the normal Chess pieces (B = N = 325, B-pair bonus = 50), this would make the opening value of a Grasshopper in a normal Chess context ~175 cP. Hardly more than a Ferz (which has a value of ~150 cP), and probably even less in the end-game.