Kevin Pacey wrote on Sat, Feb 11, 2017 06:37 AM UTC:
Somehow I cannot shake the feeling that on an 8x8 board, in many endgames at least, a single [modern] elephant (alfil+ferz compound piece) would not be worth quite as much as a single general (aka mann), with numerous pawns on the board. Such an elephant leaps, but is colour-bound while lacking a bishop's mobility. At the least, there could be many games featuring a 'bad elephant', sort of like there are cases of 'bad bishops' in chess - that is, just in regard to having many of the elephant's pawns fixed on the same colour as it moves on. Has anyone tried to evaluate the value of an elephant, at least in the opening phase? I estimate it at being worth just a fraction less than a knight is worth. Modern Shatranj is an 8x8 variant that includes elephants and generals, but no queen-like pieces, making it somewhat endgame-like from the start of a game (noting also that the board is not checkered like for a game of chess, done for that game so as to aid calculation, according to world chess champion Lasker's Manual of Chess).
Somehow I cannot shake the feeling that on an 8x8 board, in many endgames at least, a single [modern] elephant (alfil+ferz compound piece) would not be worth quite as much as a single general (aka mann), with numerous pawns on the board. Such an elephant leaps, but is colour-bound while lacking a bishop's mobility. At the least, there could be many games featuring a 'bad elephant', sort of like there are cases of 'bad bishops' in chess - that is, just in regard to having many of the elephant's pawns fixed on the same colour as it moves on. Has anyone tried to evaluate the value of an elephant, at least in the opening phase? I estimate it at being worth just a fraction less than a knight is worth. Modern Shatranj is an 8x8 variant that includes elephants and generals, but no queen-like pieces, making it somewhat endgame-like from the start of a game (noting also that the board is not checkered like for a game of chess, done for that game so as to aid calculation, according to world chess champion Lasker's Manual of Chess).