Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Nov 11, 2017 07:03 PM UTC:
@ V.R. & H.G.:
A small point of disagreement. Though I admit a lot of my piece valuations are arbitrary I personally would never set a bishop=4 full pawns, even if the B happened to be part of the bishop pair, no matter what the board size is. That's since I feel a bishop ought to be able to, in many cases, stop the number of pawns its worth (value rounded down to the nearest pawn when fractional), and as a rule a B cannot cope with 4 pawns (e.g. for chess see Fine's Basic Chess Endings), no matter the board size (granted there are a number of unlikely pawn structures of 4 pawns that can be stopped). However, I know I'm being arbitrary here, as in chess a rook can seldom deal with 5 passed pawns, and it's worth at least 5 pawns by many people's valuations. Thus, a value of up to 3.99 I would find more agreeable for a B.
An endgame question is, can K+2Bs as a rule hope to stop K+7or8 pawns? I think K+1B might stop 4 of the pawns, while the remaining B would have to try to deal with the remaining pawns, but such endgame could be complicated since for one thing the other side's K could try to support different pawn(s) at various junctures. However, I feel that as a rule 8 pawns would be too many to cope with. For what it's worth, Fine's book notes that 2 B's normally win vs. just 4 pawns.
@ V.R. & H.G.:
A small point of disagreement. Though I admit a lot of my piece valuations are arbitrary I personally would never set a bishop=4 full pawns, even if the B happened to be part of the bishop pair, no matter what the board size is. That's since I feel a bishop ought to be able to, in many cases, stop the number of pawns its worth (value rounded down to the nearest pawn when fractional), and as a rule a B cannot cope with 4 pawns (e.g. for chess see Fine's Basic Chess Endings), no matter the board size (granted there are a number of unlikely pawn structures of 4 pawns that can be stopped). However, I know I'm being arbitrary here, as in chess a rook can seldom deal with 5 passed pawns, and it's worth at least 5 pawns by many people's valuations. Thus, a value of up to 3.99 I would find more agreeable for a B.
An endgame question is, can K+2Bs as a rule hope to stop K+7or8 pawns? I think K+1B might stop 4 of the pawns, while the remaining B would have to try to deal with the remaining pawns, but such endgame could be complicated since for one thing the other side's K could try to support different pawn(s) at various junctures. However, I feel that as a rule 8 pawns would be too many to cope with. For what it's worth, Fine's book notes that 2 B's normally win vs. just 4 pawns.