king shelter - when and how?

[brtzsnr]

When and how do you compute the king shelter?

Zurichess has a very primitive notion of king shelter: it looks for pawns on king's file and the adjacent files. It only computes the king shelter when the enemy has a queen. I tried to consider the shelter when the enemy has two rooks, but it didn't help. I'm also considering to evaluate open files around king, but didn't try it yet.

[jdart]

I start with a negative score and then for each pawn near the king a bonus is given, depending on the difference between the rank of the king and the rank of the pawn (so pawns on the same file but far advanced do not count much if any as part of the shelter).

However, this is only part of the king safety computation. Attacks on squares near the king are also considered, as is the rank of the king (more penalty if the king is out past the 2nd rank), and in my program there is an interaction between shelter and attacks, because attacks count more if the king shelter is damaged.

--Jon

[cdani]

I count every of the three possible pawns immediately in front of the king and any pawns that one defend the other or are side by side, even if are more advanced.

The first ones have one fixed multiplier, and the lack of second ones a penalization.