Queen vs 3 Minors part 2

I did some more research in the case of a material imbalance of 3 minors vs a queen. In my previous post I determined the imbalance to be worth 0,82 pawns.

Unfortunately this seems to be too simple. The above imbalance figure includes the bonus for the bishop pair which the side with the minors usually enjoys. To remove this effect I repeated the test with positions where the 3 minors did not include the bishop pair.

An additional factor not covered so far is the effect coming from the number of rooks still on the board. In my previous test all starting positions included 2 rook pairs. The theory says that the bonus for the minors should be bigger if the rooks are still on the board. The bonus might be different if some rooks are removed. So I performed several tests to test this hypothesis. 

Here are my results

QRR vs RRBNN

In those positions all rooks were still on the board

Queen side scores 43,0% with equal number of pawns
Queen side scores 23,8% with Minors having an extra pawn

Value of Imbalance for Queen side: -0,37 pawns

QRvsRBNN

In those positions 1 rook for each side was removed

Queen side scores 50,5% with equal number of pawns
Queen side scores 28,9% with Minors having an extra pawn

Value of Imbalance for Queen side: +0,02 pawns

QvsBNN

 In those positions all rooks are removed

Queen side scores 70,8% with equal number of pawns
Queen side scores 44,5% with Minors having an extra pawn

Value of Imbalance for Queen side: +0,79 pawns






It seems the number of rooks has huge impact on the value of the imbalance. Its value changes by more than a pawn. 

 Probably the imbalances of queen and pawns vs a rook and two minors are to hard to be calculated or require a bigger effort. The missing pawns give the side with the minors some development compensation and also half open files, so the value of the imbalance gets polluted with other stuff. So this remains maybe as a future but not immediate exercise.

Queen vs 3 minors

Recently there was an interesting "Lonely queen" discussion at Talkchess where it was claimed that stockfish seems to have trouble to understand positions where a queen is exchanged vs 3 pieces.

iCE also does not have special code to handle this imbalance. I relied here on the mobility (3 pieces have more mobility than a queen, whose mobility in iCE is cut at 14 squares). This imbalance is difficult to tune as it appears in less than 1% of the games.






H.G. Muller suggested a cool method to not tune but to measure the value of the imbalance by playing games that enforce the imbalance and measure the winning chances for both sides. This is what I did.

I created a set of starting positions where the imbalance is present. To make it simpler to count I always gave the 3 minors to Black, but awarded the first move in halve of the starting positions to Black.

I then played a iCE vs iCE tournament. After 1000 games, Black scored 63,75%. So the imbalance has a significant influence. I now have to translate this winning percentage into centipawns as this is the score unit in iCE.

Here I removed for Black also the f7 pawn in the starting positions and played again. Black now scored 46,96%. This made the pawn worth 16,79%.


Now I could calculate the value of the imbalance as 13,75% / 16,79% * 1 pawn = 0,82 pawns.

At Talkchess the value of the imbalance was guessed to be 0,70 pawns. It seems this was an excellent guess.

Next step is to include a material imbalance term in the evaluation. It can go with the material signature and material hash, so it provides almost no additional computational costs. The impact on the playing strength will be tiny as it occurs so seldom.

But if your engine plays in 1% of its games really awkward people will notice. The stockfish case is a good example for that.

Next steps will be the measurement of some more imbalances that also involve a rook.

iCE and the "wrong" bishop

iCE vs Gaviota    55. Rxe7   1/2 : 1/2

After my failed pawn structure experiment I was looking for a small task that has a high chance of success in making my engine better ... just to overcome my disappointment.

I remembered that one of the nice folks that tested my engine after release wrote iCE doesn't know about the wrong bishop. iCE is reporting large winning scores in dead drawn games.

I got a reference of a game against gaviota 0.86. Where iCE exchanged into a endgame with the wrong bishop (diagram).

After the exchange 55. Rxe7 Kxe7 56. Kxe5 iCE found itself in this position and evaluated it with +7. So it thought it is winning,

Draw (wrong bishop)

Of course it is not.

56. ...     Kf8
57. Kf6  Kg8

and the black king controls the corner.






So this is a sign of missing chess knowledge. Humans will see the draw rather easily and if an engine scores such a position as winning it makes a bit a fool out of himself (and its author). The funny thing is, that iCE actually knows about the wrong bishop in king, bishop and pawn vs. king endgames. It did not apply this knowledge because black still owns a pawn. So the endgame module did not kick in (this requires a bare king).

In the above position iCE would not have captured the pawn at f7 (although it could). Its knowledge tells him that without the black pawn the position is a draw. So it tried to keep the black pawn alive and made silly looking moves instead.

To overcome that I coded a few lines to teach iCE about the wrong bishop in a KBPKP endgame. It is a bit more difficult than the original KBPK endgame. In some positions black can still win and in some positions having still a pawn is the losing fact for black. But finally I came up with a good set of positions that are recognized as drawn.

Now this knowledge helps in the above position

iCE 2.0 v1001 x32 [2013.12.2]
position fen 8/3Rbp2/5k2/4n3/2B1K2P/8/8/8 w - - 3 55
go depth 8
info depth 7 seldepth 10 time 0 nodes 2448 pv d7e7 e5c4 e7c7 c4d2 e4d5 f6g6 d5e5  nps 2447999 score cp 586
info depth 8 seldepth 11 time 15 nodes 17773 pv d7c7 e5c4 c7c4 f6g6 e4f3 g6h5 f3g3 f7f5 nps 1184866 score cp 477

At depth 8 iCE realizes that the exchange leads to a wrong bishop endgame and selects a different move.

Probably this not worth a single ELO point, but as I'm not belonging to the only ELO matters fraction it is worth keeping.