H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Jan 6, 2023 11:36 AM UTC:
I have started a test with Fairy-Max. It is not exactly Grand Cavalier, because Fairy-Max did have some problems with that, which did not seem worth solving. (Only start positions with a completely filled rank of 'pawns' and all pieces on the back rank can be configured. So I put the Cannons in the corners, and Cavaliers in front of them on 3rd rank. The Cavaliers that the Cannons then attack in the opening position are protected anyway, and such minor details in the opening position should not affect piece values. Worse was, unexpectedly, that since I handle promotion through a table (to allow square-dependent promotion like in Grant Acedrex) Fairy-Max also promotes 'pawns' on their own back rank! Normal Pawns of course can never get there, but I could not afford replacements like Cavaliers that can move backwards. So I replaced those by forward-only Half-Maos.)
Of course the piece values are a bit uncertain at this time, and I used the standard values for 10x8 board for the pieces. Except that I never measured the value of a Half-Mao. But that should be close to that of a FIDE Pawn. (A full Mao is worth half a Knight in a FIDE context, so a half-Mao is probably less than a Pawn, but the fact that it can promote gives it again something extra.)
For one player I replaced a Cannon by a Nightrider in the nominal start position, and for the other I did the opposit. So the imbalance is two Nightriders vs two Cannons, where each player still has one Nightrider and one Cannon in addition to that. From these positions I then play a long match, at 40 moves per minute (classical time control).
As the test is running, I can already conclude that the Cannons gete crushed. The player with the 3 Nightriders scores around 80%. I will report the exact results when the test finishes.
I have started a test with Fairy-Max. It is not exactly Grand Cavalier, because Fairy-Max did have some problems with that, which did not seem worth solving. (Only start positions with a completely filled rank of 'pawns' and all pieces on the back rank can be configured. So I put the Cannons in the corners, and Cavaliers in front of them on 3rd rank. The Cavaliers that the Cannons then attack in the opening position are protected anyway, and such minor details in the opening position should not affect piece values. Worse was, unexpectedly, that since I handle promotion through a table (to allow square-dependent promotion like in Grant Acedrex) Fairy-Max also promotes 'pawns' on their own back rank! Normal Pawns of course can never get there, but I could not afford replacements like Cavaliers that can move backwards. So I replaced those by forward-only Half-Maos.)
Of course the piece values are a bit uncertain at this time, and I used the standard values for 10x8 board for the pieces. Except that I never measured the value of a Half-Mao. But that should be close to that of a FIDE Pawn. (A full Mao is worth half a Knight in a FIDE context, so a half-Mao is probably less than a Pawn, but the fact that it can promote gives it again something extra.)
For one player I replaced a Cannon by a Nightrider in the nominal start position, and for the other I did the opposit. So the imbalance is two Nightriders vs two Cannons, where each player still has one Nightrider and one Cannon in addition to that. From these positions I then play a long match, at 40 moves per minute (classical time control).
As the test is running, I can already conclude that the Cannons gete crushed. The player with the 3 Nightriders scores around 80%. I will report the exact results when the test finishes.