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Questions tagged [evaluation]

The evaluation of a given position

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How many points is each chess piece worth?

I am a beginner at chess; please answer this question for me. How many points is each chess piece worth?
Jethik
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Why does Stockfish undervalue pawns when compared to the classical "a piece is worth three pawns" approach?

I was taking a look at values engines give to pawns and piece and was quite shocked by Stockfish values for middlegame (Mg): PawnValueMg = 128 KnightValueMg = 721 ~ 5.6 pawns BishopValueMg = 825 ~ 6.4 pawns RookValueMg = 1276 ~ 9.9…
emdio
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Should a chess engine be aware of opposite-side castling?

I often hear chess experts and chess articles say that when opposite side castling occurs on the board that it is important to launch an attack on the enemy player as fast as possible. Up to the point where giving up a couple pawns or a piece could…
Tauist
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What proofs for refuted gambits are there?

I've stumbled upon this article a while ago, and I've also seen refutations for the Muzio Gambit (Joseph Kling & Bernard Horwitz - Chess Studies on Endings of Games). I'm wondering what other gambits are proven to be unsound. Edit: I'm looking for…
Valentin Brasso
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Why do chess engines sometimes miss good moves (or take forever to spot)?

It is not the first time that I found a greatly superior move than the chess engine did, it even takes them a while to understand these moves after you make them. For example, the move 15 ... Bf2 in the game below: [fen ""] [StartFlipped "1"] 1. e4…
ajax333221
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Is this a draw despite the Stockfish evaluation of −5?

I reached this position as Black: [Title "Black to move"] [FEN "8/8/8/3q4/6kp/7R/6P1/6K1 b - - 3 46"] And I felt that I cannot make any progress and so it feels like a draw. However, Stockfish evaluates it as −5.1, though it also seems to be unable…
user21820
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Is there an easy way to detect a draw in a King + Pawn vs King endgame?

I know the basics of opposition, but I am struggling to evaluate positions for drawishness in King + Pawn VS King endgame. A lot of times it is useful to know whether you should make an exchange. For example, in this position: [Title "Black to…
Salvador Dali
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Does GM Larry Kaufman's "principle of the redundancy of major pieces" truly exists? Or could this effect be caused by the number of Pawns instead?

The following is an extract from The Evaluation of Material Imbalances by GM Larry Kaufman. I put in bold characters everything that was important for this…
Fate
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Why don't chess engines take into account the time left by each player?

Firstly, I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong the way engines are implemented at the moment, by analyzing only the current position regardless of time left by the players. This is great and it gives us a nearly perfect estimation of the…
ihavenoidea
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What is an accurate way to evaluate chess positions?

I've been interested for a while about a computer chess AI algorithms (and got the chance to work on one at some point) like Minimax, and as the core component of these algorithms is the so-called evaluation function to determine what is a good…
Charles Menguy
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How do chess engines decide which best line to play when the game outcome is within their horizon?

Inspired by the Hot Network Question "In this puzzle, why does white play dxe5?", when a chess engine is in a position that it can definitively call lost, drawn, or won, what policy is used to decide among lines that lead to the same outcome? In a…
which-line
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Does blitz change the relative value of position vs material?

The way I see it, true gambits trade material for position, which in turn could give you opportunities to regain more material. However, in blitz play, you are less likely to notice those opportunities in order to exploit them. Is it fair to say…
MWB
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Is there an engine evaluation technique that factors in 'time'?

An interesting game played out between Wesley So and Levon Aronion1: [title "Wesley So vs Levon Aronian"] [fen "rn4k1/p2bP1b1/2q5/1pp2p1Q/2p5/8/PP3PPP/3R1RK1 w - - 0 1"] So was in a far superior position according to the computer, but had only…
stevec
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Computer evaluations: How trustworthy are they?

Fritz 12 with Rybka gave a friend of mine an evaluation of +3 for white in this endgame position, [Title "White to move"] [FEN "8/8/8/3k3p/3P3K/2P3R1/8/7r w - - 0 1"] which turned out to be a draw. But I've heard that +3 from a computer means a…
chubbycantorset
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Bishop vs Knight

I read in a book written by Fischer about piece values, and he said that a knight is worth 3 pawns, and a bishop is worth 3,25 pawns. I know that in closed positions knights are better, and I have also read in a Nimzovich book that a centralized…
Ghita Tomoiaga
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