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Jeremy Lennert wrote on Fri, Feb 1, 2013 04:47 PM EST:

Jörg, I'm not sure you've given due consideration to board geometry. Betza's mobility calculations attempt to account for both the probability that a move will be blocked by another piece AND the probability that a move will be blocked by the edge of the board. If you assume that pieces are distributed randomly, then the odds of being blocked by a piece are p^(distance-1), as your formula suggests, but the odds of being blocked by the edge of the board follow a completely different pattern (e.g. for a rook, it's 1 - (distance/8)). That means it can't be accurately represented simply by plugging a different value for p into the polynomial shown in your post.

You also seem to be assuming that piece value is directly proportional to mobility. Most people believe that value has a super-linear relationship to mobility; the evidence being that compound pieces tend to be worth more than their component parts. There are also many things other than mobility that might affect a piece's value; Betza attempted to compile a list here.

Finally, you might want to consider that Betza believed a full Rook had a value closer to 3/2 of a Knight than to 5/3 of a Knight. If that's the case, then it's unclear whether a piece priced at 4 points should aim to be worth 4/5 of a Rook or 4/3 of a Knight--a difference of perhaps 10%, or roughly the difference in your calculated mobility between an R4 and a R5.


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