Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Thanks David.

I wasn't aware of White Elephant Chess or the Great Elephants.

I stand corrected I my evaluation of the strenght of the Silver Elephant.

I based my statement more on my short experience playing with the Silver Elephant and the Bishop on the same board, than empirically.

While the feeling from my short experience playing the Silver Elephant was that they were both similar in value.

Mathematically, these are my value estimates on a 10x10 board:

Bishop 3
Rook 10.5
Queen 16
Knight 5
Silver Elephant 4

What I was surpise to find out was that the Silver elephant was weaker to the Knight.

I must agree with David. I did lots of empirical piece-value determinations on the computer, with setups like the array for this game (putting two exo-pieces in a context of orthodox pieces on a 10x8 board). I did not test the Silver Elephant, but the (FA) piece was already very close in value to a Knight. (In pairs, that is; being color bound there likely is a pair-bonus effect involved.)

My empirical formula for 8-fold symmetric short-range pieces was (5/8*N+30)*N centi-Pawn, where N is the number of target squares. For 10 squares this would give 362. (On a scale where N=280.) But in other tests forward moves turned out to contribute about twice as much to value as sideway or backward moves. If I count forward moves as 4/3 and backward moves as 2/3, I get N=32/3 and a value of 391. And this piece seems to have mating portential as well, which should probably be good for a bonus.

For comparison: a single Bishop on 10x8 is worth about 330 on the same scale, with a bonus of 50 for a pair.