I wonder why the knight is valued the same as the bishop when it’s so powerful. It’s the only piece that can jump over other pieces! It’s also the strongest when compared to its equivalent in xiangqi and shogi. The ma in xiangqi can move in any direction but can’t jump over a piece directly in front of it. The keima in shogi can jump over pieces but it can only move forward. Because it can’t move sideways or backwards, it’s forced to promote to a gold general when it reaches the end!
Limited range, and generally it’s hard to find good and advanced positions for knights. When you can find those advanced positions that your knight is safe and can attack or control important squares, it can become more valuable than a bishop.
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Knight is more important early with more pieces on the board, bishop is better later when movement is unobstructed. In the endgame the bishop can move across the whole board and the knight’s special ability to jump over is less important. I would think checkmate with two bishops is easier than with two knights.
“Three pawns” is just an average value for rule of thumb, you might always have strategic reasons to value one over the other in a game.
It is enforced on the street, I have no idea what top players do, or how an official tournament is conducted.
In my experience this is something that should only happen or or twice in a game, if a piece is really out of line. Otherwise it should be avoided.
The spirit of the rule is not only to make sure that it’s clear what your move is but also to avoid the scenario where you go to move a piece and your opponent begins reacting already. If one player touches a pawn to move it, and the other player already has a response planned, he or she may react as soon as the piece is touched, getting ready to make the next move. (This could be even more true with a clock running.) In other words once the player touches the piece to move it, the other player can assume that that piece will move and act accordingly. In my experience you must not grab a piece that you might conceivably be about to move, then (appear to) change a mind and move another one.
This sounds like a great solution.
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The funny thing is in most of my endgames the knights and the bishops are all gone lol.
Considering that KNNvK is a helpmate not a checkmate, I would agree
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Ich bin vom Schach (Niveau: Vereinsspieler) zum Go gekommen.
Meine Tipps für Schach:
- Eröffnung
- Mit e4 oder d4 beginnen.
- Die Springer vor den Läufern entwickeln.
- Die Rochade anstreben.
- Die Dame nicht früh ins Spiel bringen.
- In der Eröffnung keine Figur zweimal ziehen (ohne taktischen Grund).
- Möglichst mit jedem Zug eine Drohung aufstellen.
- Bis auf konkrete Fallen wenig auswendig lernen, besser allgemeine Prinzipien anwenden.
- Mittelspiel
- Taktik
- Mattbilder lernen und üben.
- Fesselung, Spieß
- Springergabel, Bauerngabel
- Abzugsschach, Doppelschach
- …
- Strategie
- Materialvorteil anstreben, dann abtauschen, im Endspiel Vorteil verwerten.
- Das Zentrum kontrollieren.
- Bauernschwächen vermeiden (isolierte Bauern, Doppelbauern, rückständige Bauern)
- Türme auf offene Linien bringen, dort verdoppeln.
- …
- Taktik
- Endspiel
- Mattführungen Dame, Turm, Läuferpaar, Läufer und Springer erlernen.
- Bauernendspiele, Begriffe wie Opposition der Könige und Quadratregel verstehen. Zugzwang und Patt sind in Bauernendspielen wichtig.
- Türme gehören hinter die eigenen Bauern.
Allgemein: Beim Blitzschach lernt man nichts, man wendet nur Routinen an. Wenn man weiterkommen will, braucht man mehr Bedenkzeit. Nachträgliche Analyse ist zu empfehlen.
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Things I learnt in chess that can be applied to Go:
| # | Chess | Go | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Think before you play. | Think before you play. | This goes without saying, but sometimes this is also most easily missed |
| 2 | Develop your pieces early. | Develop your stones and occupy the big places early. | Still a good general advice, though it may not be applicable nowadays where local contact play starts very early in the game. |
| 3 | Always look out for threats that you can make use of. | Always look out for sente or aji that you can make use of. | You can’t move the stones in Go once they are played, so we need to make full use of the existing stones on the board. |
| 4 | Not all threats need to be answered. | Not all sente moves need to be answered. | Think whether there are other more important areas to play rather than answering it immediately. Tenuki is always an option. |
| 5 | If you need to answer or defend, try to do it more efficiently. | If you need to answer or defend, try to do it more efficiently. | Efficiency is the key! |
| 6 | Unless you blundered your queen, don’t fret if you blundered some pieces because you’ll still have chances later. | Unless your big dragon is clearly dead with no aji, don’t fret just because you lost some stones because you’ll still have chances later. | Humans will make mistakes so wait patiently. |
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Point 2: not obvious to link. As we say play urgent before big. Of course we use to say play the biggest too.
Point 3&4: I think the question is more about good timing (nor too early nor too late) but that’s not in your chess pov.
What I like about Chess is the tactics. Elegant combinations can be beautiful, and it’s rewarding when you find them. That’s what Chess is a lot of the time: “finding” moves. Or remembering them, in case of the opening. Of course Chess is a strategy game, but I understand that to a Go player it doesn’t always feel that way. I have certainly felt that way myself, and it’s probably why I gravitated more towards Go over time.
I believe we like Go because it rewards judgment, which has a significant creative aspect. There is an overwhelming number of options, and our intuitive judgment of where to play next is our greatest asset. It’s what AlphaGo finally managed to replicate with its policy network, and why it was the first computer program to beat a pro. In Chess, there is much more emphasis on calculation which we call reading. Judgment is still important, of course, but not like in Go.
I set out to invent a Chess variant that feels more strategic, leaves more room for creativity, but still retains the beauty of elegant piece combinations. Fisher had the right idea with Chess 960, partially. At least it got rid of the excruciatingly boring opening book, but it doesn’t really feel more strategic or creative. It also doesn’t get rid of draws, or of white’s unacceptably large first-move advantage.
I’ve landed on a variant with a simple economy, which creates unique strategic objectives on the board, and randomly generated obstacles on the board that restrict piece movement. Not too many, just enough to make every board spawn unique and strategically nuanced in its own ways. Obstacles and economic objectives are mirrored by default to keep it balanced, and black starts the game with some gold to compensate for the first move advantage.
Perhaps most importantly, with the addition of the possibility to place new pieces there are so many possible moves and the game tree expands so quickly that strategic judgment feels more important than in regular Chess. And it can make for some beautiful tactics as well. I’m biased, but I’ve found it to be more fun than regular Chess. Maybe it’s a Go player’s Chess.
It’s still under development, but come check it out: https://goldrushgambit.com/
I haven’t invited many people to play it yet, so you’re going to want to bring a friend or use the Discord server to find opponents.
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Bishops are typically valued slightly higher, even. I think as you get better, you will start to see their value more.
Knight forks are particularly strong on lower levels of play because they are easy to miss and can be very impactful. You will probably lose queens and rooks to knight forks many times. Once you start to see them coming, knights will probably feel less strong to you.
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I sense some analogy with go.
At lower levels, players are more likely to miss bad aji (danger). Tricky moves that exploit this can be unreasonably effective. The downside of this is that it can lead to bad habits, playing lots of aji keshi moves which only “work” at lower levels of play where the opponent is more likely to respond poorly or miss the danger completely.
But this speculative style of play won’t really work against stronger players that usually don’t miss the danger. And at higher levels of play, players usually make better shapes that leave little aji to begin with, so the game becomes more strategic.
If I’d have to pick types of moves that may be effective at lower levels of play, but less effective at higher levels of play, I’d probably pick atari or pushing.
As for a higher level types of moves that are probably not seen as much at lower levels of play, I’d pick keima or tenuki.
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What I like about go is that the opening is so “free”.
In chess you start from the same position every game. It feels like only during the middle game and the endgame, when the game has developed beyond the opening books of both players[*] and the chess board has “opened up”, there is room for actual creativity.
In go it is the other way around. You start with an empty board, and only during the late game does the game become less “fluid” with less room for creativity (and possibly even a bit tedious because of that).
[*] I don’t even have an opening book, being a weak chess player, so for me the creativity starts already during the opening, but that also means I can’t really compete with anyone that has some chess opening knowledge. I feel that in go a lack of joseki knowlegde is less of a disadvantage.
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In chess they have a name for almost any opening moves. In Go you’ll end up with something new after just a few moves 
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The same is true for Go. 
From my experience, opening knowledge develops very naturally with your overall chess abilities. If you can’t compete with someone, It’s typically because they are stronger in every aspect of the game.
I regularly play chess with people significantly stronger than me and I rarely get outplayed in the opening. It’s much more common to get outplayed in the middlegame or endgame. And, for my level (1700 FIDE), I’m absolutely terrible when it comes to opening knowledge.
In my opinion, the importance of opening knowledge in chess gets overstated here in the forum quite a bit.
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About #6, a difference is that in Chess you often have to lower your aim from “try to win” to “try do draw”.
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Opening knowledge develops naturally for people who are serious enough about the game to play it regularly but not for everyone. Or rather, it does, but then it gets forgotten. I take long breaks from Chess, think 3+ years, and I forget pretty much all opening knowledge past move 4 during those breaks. During one of my more active periods, I had some non-zero amount of knowledge about e4 e5 d4 and of e4 c5, but this has completely faded over time. I might have flashes of memory when I play these openings now, but would commonly make big mistakes that I would have never made back then.
Other skills like calculating and general strategic concepts don’t get forgotten as easily. Probably because they are different kinds of memory. The result is that I generally find myself playing at a level where virtually all of my opponents have better knowledge of openings than I do. Of course, some of them will also have actually studied openings.
In other words, the frequency and seriousness of our play affects what kind of knowledge we retain.
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