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Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Hans Aberg wrote on Thu, Apr 24, 2008 08:13 AM EDT:

|| So the approach I suggested is to find a set of end-game positions
|| where the outcome is always a draw or always a win, with extreme
|| positions excepted. This might produce different values.'
H.G.Muller:
| The problem is that such positions do not exist, except for some very
| sterile end-games.

There is a difference between finding formally proved positions, and those that have such an outcome by human experience. If one in middle game exchanges ones queen for a rook and temporary very strong initiative, suppose this initiative does not lead to an immediate mate combination - it might be very effective to threaten a mate, which the opponent can only avoid by giving back some extra material - how much more material is needed in order to ensure a draw? A bishop perhaps, if the pawns are otherwise favorable, otherwise at least some more material, a pawn or two. This is a different judgement than a statistical one: a purely statistical judgment can probably be quite easily beaten by a human. It goes into a difficult AI problem: computers are not very good at recognizing patterns and contexts. But the classical piece value system probably builds on some such information.