Lesson #2: Value of the Pieces

Today we learned about the value of the pieces, starting with the following point assignments:

• 1 point for pawns
• 3 points for bishops and knights
• 5 points for rooks
• 9 points for queens

Remember that these appear to be the average values I've seen across many books and guides, but books sometimes have competing (but close) values.

I asked that you be skeptical of such a simple scheme, and we proceeded to look for evidence of these values, at least relatively. We did this two ways:

1. racing the pieces around points on the chessboard, we found that the higher point value pieces were faster
2. counting the number of squares covered, we found that mostly the higher point value pieces attacked more squares

We then looked at some situations where one side is given the choice of capturing multiple pieces. The simplest case is to deprive the opponent of as many points as possible. But then there are exceptions. What if the opponent can recapture us in one case? What if the lower value piece is threatening a mate, like when a pawn is one move away from promoting?

This week's handout was crafted to exercise your mind on these situations:

The advanced group covered discovered attacks with two miniature games, and the handout is focused around a special type of discovered attack called double check. Double checks are particularly strong because it requires the opponent king to move, instead of being able to possibly bolster defenses by blocking with a piece, or retaliating by capturing the checking piece.

This was because we were unable to construct a position where a double check wasn't coming from two different directions, and a single move cannot block from two directions. Similarly, a single move cannot capture the two checking pieces. We convinced ourselves that creating a triple check was impossible.

The handout has some really cool quizes with double check as the main theme.

I was very impressed with how well you were able to visualize several moves ahead! The few quizzes we did together didn't even require the demo board be set up. I hope you'll try to solve the handout mentally also, but fall back to a real board if stuck.

One bit of feedback I'll try to incorporate ASAP is to attach a review or at least instructions with each handout. It wasn't clear exactly what is expected of students in the handout. Generally, you're expected to indicate the best move for whose turn it is (marked by the circle on the bottom left of each board). If you can do that by writing down the move notation, please do so. Otherwise just draw a line for the piece to move. Each handout should have the theme of that day's lesson.

Oh, we also welcomed a new student Atley, and missed Gabriel and Liam and hope to see them back soon! Thank you again to Rachel and Jaime for assistance.