Queens vs Knights

[Adam Hair]

Pawel has an elephantiasis correction for the queen in Rodent III:

If # of own queens > 1
then correction = -constant * (# of opp knights + # of opp bishops)

The default value of the constant is 4, which may be too low for this situation. I used 60 in the game above, though I have no idea if that was a good value.

This doesn't seem to work. I just played Rodent III against Stockfish 8, and they seem to agree that the score of the initial position is around +8 for the Queens.

I am assuming that you used Rodent III 0.172, which is the last official version from Pawel. I am not certain if it has the elephantiasis correction. And if it does, the constant is hardwired and would probably be 4. So the correction in this case would be 28cp.

I am using version 0.176, whose source I grabbed from github. I changed the constant to a parameter that I could access via "setoption".

[Adam Hair]

Pawel has an elephantiasis correction for the queen in Rodent III:

If # of own queens > 1
then correction = -constant * (# of opp knights + # of opp bishops)

The default value of the constant is 4, which may be too low for this situation. I used 60 in the game above, though I have no idea if that was a good value.

I just had some fun adding the same term to Stockfish (with constant=60cp), which should be about right. I only had time to let it play a few games, but they were rather decisive. The queens are toast.

By the way, I made a mistake. > should be replaced by >=.

[hgm]

I set up a broadcast of QueeNy vs Stockfish 8, at http://hgm.nubati.net/variants/brigade/ .

It makes use of my new web-based broadcasting scheme, which is largely untested. I once used a more primitive version for mini-Shogi, but this had not addressed problems with castling, e.p. capture and promotion. These are fixed now. (This required the broadcaster to keep track of the board position, to recognize when e1g1 is a castling, and f4e3 an e.p. capture, and does require knowledge of the pieces to interpret the promotion suffix.)

Having live clocks also is a bit problematic, because the data on the server only holds the time remaining when the move was made, and the viewer could probe for the move much later, not knowing how much time had elapsed since the move was deposited there.

By pressing 'show moves' you get a list of the available games (the last one being the one in progress). From that you can then select a game for viewing.

Game termination doesn't seem to work yet; it thinks all games are still in progress. The 'result' line apparently isn't correctly deposited. I am still working on that.

To chat, just enter an Alias, and type what you want to say in the text entry below it.

Tell me what you think.

[hgm]

It seems typing in the viewer page (for chatting) is almost impossible: the keyboard seems dead a fraction of the time, without queueing the keystrokes, but just ignoring them. I suppose this happens while it is downloading game or PV data. I should switch to asynchronous probing.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

I set up a broadcast of QueeNy vs Stockfish 8, at http://hgm.nubati.net/variants/brigade/ .

It makes use of my new web-based broadcasting scheme, which is largely untested. I once used a more primitive version for mini-Shogi, but this had not addressed problems with castling, e.p. capture and promotion. These are fixed now. (This required the broadcaster to keep track of the board position, to recognize when e1g1 is a castling, and f4e3 an e.p. capture, and does require knowledge of the pieces to interpret the promotion suffix.)

Having live clocks also is a bit problematic, because the data on the server only holds the time remaining when the move was made, and the viewer could probe for the move much later, not knowing how much time had elapsed since the move was deposited there.

By pressing 'show moves' you get a list of the available games (the last one being the one in progress). From that you can then select a game for viewing.

Game termination doesn't seem to work yet; it thinks all games are still in progress. The 'result' line apparently isn't correctly deposited. I am still working on that.

To chat, just enter an Alias, and type what you want to say in the text entry below it.

Tell me what you think.

I will visit when you get more than 100 simultaneous viewers.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

with this one:

[d]nn1nkn1n/p3p2p/1n3n2/8/8/8/P3P2P/2QQKQ2 w - - 0 1

the closest possible in Fritz,
5 white wins, 5 black wins, 10 draws

not a shadow of knight superiority.

equal score, but more natural position with all pawns will only favour queens, of course, as pawns will restrain knights.

This opinion is also completely wrong. Basic chess knowledge already should tell you otherwise.
More pawns of course don't restrain the Knights. It's the opposite, the more pawns and the more closed the position the stronger are the Knights.
Also more pawns enable more pawn defenders for dangerous Knight outposts.
The Queens need space for their power and too much pawns prevent that.

not if there are so many knights, then you need to restrain them.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

you don't know what you are talking.

2Qs vs 5Ns, with all pawns on the board, is easily won for the queen side.

It seems more that you don't know what I am talking. What's this obsession with 2Q vs 5N? I never claimed it was won for the Knight side, and whether it is or not is totally irrelevant, as 3Q vs 7N should never convert to it.

BTW, the "most reasonable position accepted by Fritz" that you used to test 2Q-vs-3N with (1nnnknn1/p1pp1pp1/8/8/8/8/P1PP1PP1/2QQK3 w - - 0 1) is ridiculously biased to favor the Queens: 1. Qb2 immediately forks a hanging Knight and a hanging Pawn, and thus gains a Pawn. If you use silly positions like that for testing, no wonder you never arrive at a correct conclusion...

3Qs vs 7Ns is, if not won, at least measurably better for the queen side.

Coming from you that makes it certain that it is lost for the Queens...

maybe you played those Queeny games in the past millenium, but, due to its very poor search, such games would be indicative of nothing.

Queeny will be missing almost all tactical solutions, involving deep lines with checks, capturing, etc., and that is what queens do best.

Apparently Stockfish 8 misses those too, because it still loses with the Queens against QueeNy...

my shootouts with SF and Komodo are quite convincing, queens easily win 2Qs vs 5Ns, and at least draw 3Qs vs 7Ns, but the queen side only misses early sacs, that would boost its score, because of lack of knowledge.

Doesn't mean a thing, if you cannot prove first that Komodo doesn't play like an idiot with the Knights. Beating an idiot is no great achievement, and doesn't prove his position was worse.

with big pawn span, queens always fork something; this is unavoidable, I checked that many times before.

Adam's game shows otherwise; seemingly, you are the only one having positive results with Queeny.

we started that in 2013, probably we will finish it in 2021.

[hgm]

I will visit when you get more than 100 simultaneous viewers.

How would you know I have them? How do you know I don't have them now? How would I know that?

BTW, 11-2 for QueeNy, so far. So SF 8 manages to win some games. Often through a recognizable stupidity of QueeNy. Like putting a Knight on h1, and then (blocked) Pawns on f7, g6. Seems a draw is coming (2Q vs 4N, no Pawns left).

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

I wonder why should there be engines showing score from the point of view of the side to move?

For UCI this is easy: the spec says that theis is what they should do. For CECP it's not mandatory, but sufficiently standard that it's annoying when engines don't do it (*cough*crafty*cough*).

so what happens when you have an UCI engine correctly showing score from white point of view only?

watching scores has meaning only for humans, and those are accustomed to the anchor of the white side, in this way it is immediately clear who has the advantage.

with score shown from the point of view of the stm, if that side is black, a human has difficulty understanding what happens on the board in terms of score.

not to mention the case, when one engine shows score from white point of view, and another one from stm point of view: a total chaos.

probably, it is time to revise that in UCI.

[Lyudmil Tsvetkov]

Pawel has an elephantiasis correction for the queen in Rodent III:

If # of own queens > 1
then correction = -constant * (# of opp knights + # of opp bishops)

The default value of the constant is 4, which may be too low for this situation. I used 60 in the game above, though I have no idea if that was a good value.

I just had some fun adding the same term to Stockfish (with constant=60cp), which should be about right. I only had time to let it play a few games, but they were rather decisive. The queens are toast.

maybe you will share your code with us?

from what position?

how many games?

what TC?

SF-revised playing both sides?

can we look at some of the games?