![]() ![]() This should be interpreted as Black being ahead by one and a half pawns. If a computer engine evaluates a position as +5, then White is leading by the value of a rook!Įngines often give an evaluation with a decimal, like -1.5. These evaluations are directly correlated to chess piece values! For example, a +1 evaluation means that White is ahead one point (the value of a pawn) while a -1 evaluation translates to Black being ahead one point. This is because the king cannot be captured (an attacked king is in check), and also because checkmating the king is the true goal of any chess game.Įngines give evaluations based on a numerical assignment. The king is the only piece that doesn't have a point value. A pawn is worth one point, a knight or bishop is worth three points, a rook is worth five points and a queen is worth nine points. It should come as no surprise that the piece values are directly tied to a piece's strength. Chess Piece ValuesĪs mentioned, each piece has a different value. However, chess piece values give us a good idea of which player is better or winning, or if the position is level. These point values don't determine who wins a game (the goal of chess is to deliver checkmate, not to capture the most pieces). This information helps us determine what piece should be traded for another piece, how we evaluate an exchange, and even how computer engines evaluate a position! Here is what you need to know about piece values:Ĭhess piece values give us a relative worth for each piece. Let's dive in and see what the chess pieces are worth! Every piece has different strengths and weaknesses, so they are valued differently. Not surprisingly we don't find any elephants in the European chess sets.Chess piece values indicate the value of the different chess pieces and how they relate to each other. Rook then really points to the Oriental origins of chess, while medieval northern Europeans put their own interpretations on the other pieces, effectively naturalizing them. ![]() In English, we don't speak of a "tower" as Germans and Scandinavians do (although the old-fashioned term "castle" persists among the older generations), but of a "rook" which has no etymological value in English as it is originally a loanword from Persian (meaning "chariot"), via Arabic and French. In French, the bishop is neither a bishop or a runner but a "fou" (fool/jester). ![]() Even the Queen is known as a "lady" (and not Königin/drottning, as one might expect). Pawn and Bauer/bonde have some overlap but are still distinct conceptual entities. So the knight was not a horseman but a "jumper", and the bishop was not a man of the cloth but a "runner". Germans (and slightly later presumably Scandinavian speakers, probably mediated via German) must when the game arrived on their shores have seen the pieces of the newly introduced game and associated them with different things than did speakers of English. It's interesting how the various pieces have been named and conceptualized in different languages. Rook: German = Turm "tower" Swedish = torn "tower"Īs you can see, Scandinavian (here represented by Swedish) tends to follow the German model, rather than the English-language one. Queen: German = Dame "lady" Swedish = dam "lady" Pawn: German = Bauer "farmer, peasant" Swedish = bonde "farmer, peasant" Knight: German = Springer "jumper" Swedish = springare "jumper"īishop: German = Läufer "runner" Swedish = löpare "runner" I can only speak for German and Scandinavian, but, in contrast to English, the names of the following pieces are: ![]()
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