Jörg Knappen wrote on Tue, Aug 7, 2012 08:01 AM UTC:
Ralph Betza somewhere defined the quantum of advantage (aka one tempo) and
quantified it to 0.33 pawn units.
But: It is not clear at all that the advantage truely exists. For example
look at the game known as Dawson's Chess: Black and White have lines of
chess pawns placed on the 3rd and 5th rank. Winner is whoever manages to
break through the opponent's pawn line.
Whether White or Black wins is intricately dependent on the number of
pawns, there are even mathematical papers on this subject, e.g.,
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/papers/unpublished/DawsonChess.pdf
Dawson himself analysed the game by hand to upto 40 pawns.
