Single Comment

'One hypothesis about why the Chancellor does so well is that the R has a weakness that is masked when N is added to form Chancellor. This weakness would be its relative slowness and difficulty of development, and perhaps its lack of forwardness (it has only one forwards direction).'

The fact that the Rook has just the one forward direction does not explain the lack of difference between Rook+Bishop and Rook+Knight as both wopuld gain from the non-Rook move. The more likely factors are (a) that adding the Knight move to a Rook with eight adjoining allies allows it to leap out of that space in a way that a Bishop move does not and (b) just adding the Rook move to a Bishop removes its colourbinding, adding it to a Knight rewmoves colourswitching, which is the Knight's property of always moving to the (not just an) other colour. Both compounds - and for that matter Bishop+Knight - can move to squares both of the same colour and of the opposite one. There are other kind of switching - the Silvergeneral is rankswitching (always moves an odd number of ranks), the Fibnif and Mushroom fileswitching (always move an odd number of files), and the Ferz and Camel both. Can everyone see why pieces that are both rankswitching and fileswitching are colourbound?