Enter Your Reply

Michael, please give a concise account of 'Betza's Atomic Theory'. I've
read Scharnagl's papers on piece value, and one can immediately see in
this attempt, and others, that the result is not wholly correct. Had the
bishop's value exceeded the knight's value to this extent, then
exchanging a bishop against a knight would lead to minor advantage. But
practice has shown that bishops and knights have equal value. However, as
the player can sometimes steer the game into positions where the bishop is
stronger, it is often a good strategy to defer exchange.

If the Mammoth (Mastodon) is very strong due to its manœuvrability then a
paradox ensues. It cannot manœuvre because it's so valuable and must fall
back before the lighter pieces. This means that it's not so strong after
all. Unlike a Rook it cannot threathen at a distance. It must go forward
to make threaths, and this means that it exposes itself to threaths.
Moreover, the Mammoth is not only vulnerable at a short distance, it's
also easily exposed to threaths from long distance, by all other pieces
except the king. That is, other pieces can easily threathen the Mammoth
without being threathened themselves.

It seems like the 'vulnerability factor' is high with the Mammoth (is
'vulnerability' included when determining piece value mathematically?).
It is also a slow piece. It takes four moves to move it across a big
board. I don't believe it compares to a Cardinal (Archbishop, B+N) in
strength. The latter is faster and much less vulnerable. Intuitively, I
would say that the Mammoth compares to the value of a Rook.

Mats