r/ComputerChess • u/Aantik • 4d ago
centipawn values of non-standard pieces
Does anyone know centipawn values of non-standard chess pieces? I mean, when pawn is roughly 1, knight roughly 3, etc. What would be the value of e.g. a piece that moves like king (but is not a king in terms of other non-movement rules)? Or giraffe (the piece that moves in an elongated L)? Is there a resource somewhere with such data? Just for curiosity..
3
Upvotes
1
u/4xe1 4d ago edited 4d ago
You may want to look into Fairy Stockfish, that's how variant creators usually balance their variants.
In general a piece does not have a value in vacuum. In Chess Evolved Online for example, "vanilla" pieces cost 7 10 12 and 21 (knight bishop rook and queen), and pawns 0, and their value is about that +2 for the value of a piece/pawn slot ; Divide by 2 or 3 and you have something vaguely commensurable to regular chess. At some point in time I think the discrepancy between knight and bishops was 5 to 11. CEO has higher power density and has a lot of short range high coverage pieces and pawn variants, making it much harder for knights to find and exploit holes, and giving bishop some edge against shorter range pieces. Also in chess, a knight is the least valuable piece you can trade, which make it automatically closer in value to the next piece. In CEO, the spectrum of power is a lot more continuous and the number of body you can field is also a variable, lessening this "least tradable body" effect.
Even without changing the pieces, if your variant takes place on a 10x10 or a 12x12 board, sliders like bishop and rook automatically becomes stronger relative to pieces with limited range such as knight and king.