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Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Mar 9 03:29 PM UTC in reply to H. G. Muller from 07:40 AM:

One problem with computer studies of chess [variants] is that there has been no peer review by many mathematicians, and grandmasters of chess might be thrown in. For the scientific method to work in a trustworthy way, at least according to the high priests of science etc., you need that.

There are things already about computer studies that give me red flags personally (although I am no scientist/math wizard). The claimed margin of error could be wrong, for one thing. The armies or initial position chosen for each side of a given study could make a hugely underestimated difference. The (2300 FIDE at best!?) engine(s) used have been relatively weak so far, as far as I know - chess endgames take 2700+ human opponent players to play optimally sometimes.

I'm not sure why I should not believe such computer studies in general should be just dismissed as a pile of rubbish, if people more knowledgeable were to insist on rigourous proof for studies being correct at this point in time, if you want to play hardball about publishing standards. Such standards are reserved for scientific journals in the real world anyway, not for hobbyists who do not have (much, if any) money or life and death issues at stake.

More specifically for myself, I already balk at the idea Amazon only =Q+N in value, even on 8x8. As a chess master with the memory of a number of chess world champions' and grandmasters' views, I do not trust that single B merely = N exactly on 8x8 on average. As for Archbishop almost = Chancellor, a bit hard to trust, but that is more alien to my intuition. They both cover 16 nearby cells in a radius of 2 cells, I give you that.

[edit: if you really want, to please/amuse you and others I could always [not just sometimes] put calculations I use for my tentative estimated piece values on Rules Pages Notes - I look at the answers I get and see if my intuition agrees (so far it has, pretty much). I have yet to do such calculations for my most recent large batch of Rules Pages. For what it's worth, sometimes I also borrow some of your rules of thumb, where I lack my own formulae.]


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