Always remember that chess is a game of war. And in chess, as in war, all other things being equal, the bigger army will win. Why? Well, if you have more to attack with than your opponent has to defend with, then your attack will overwhelm the defense. If you have more to defend with than your opponent has to attack with, then your defense will turn away the attack. When you have more to attack and defend with than your opponent does, you have more power, which chess players call more material. A material advantage, as chess players call it, is an advantage in power. When you have a material advantage over your opponent, you have a more powerful army than your opponent.
When Fewer Pieces = More Material
Most people probably agree that the U.S. has the most powerful military in the world.
So if the U.S. went to war with a country that had four times the population, the U.S.
would win, right? But wait a minute, the other country has almost four times more people than the U.S., so it could potentially field an army that was four times bigger.
So why wouldn’t the other country win?
Without getting bogged down in military science, I think one thing at least is pretty clear: Four times the population might mean they have more soldiers, but we have extremely sophisticated weapons. (Our soldiers are probably better trained as well.) They might have more soldiers, and maybe even more weapons, but our soldiers with our weapons are worth more. Even with less, we have more power.
Well, imagine that the pawn is a foot soldier and the rook is a tank, and you begin to see how this applies to chess.
Sometimes a material advantage means having more than your opponent. But sometimes a material advantage means that what you have is worth more.
The Relative Worth of the Pieces
So just how powerful is each piece, relative to every other piece? There is a standard scale that answers this question. This is a very useful scale to know, and you should commit it to memory. Do keep in mind that it’s only an approximation, but it’s a heck of a good approximation! The relative power of the pieces are as follows:
Pawn 1 point
Knight 3 points
Bishop 3 points (plus a teensy bit more) Rook 5 points
Queen 9 points
There are two words chess players use to talk about capturing one piece for another:
“trade” and “exchange.” To “trade” a piece for another is to capture one of your opponent’s pieces in return for allowing one of your pieces to be captured. To “trade bishops,” for example, is to capture your opponent’s bishop in return for allowing your bishop to be captured. But a trade doesn’t have to be one piece for its
counterpart: You can “trade a knight for a bishop,” or “trade two rooks for a queen,”
and so on.
The word “exchange” is used similarly: You can “exchange knights,” or “exchange two pawns and a bishop for a rook.” But the word “exchange” also has a very specific meaning: To have the advantage of the exchange means to have a rook more than your opponent, when your opponent has only an extra knight or bishop to compensate. For example, if you have “an exchange for a pawn,” it means you have a rook more than your opponent, while your opponent has either an extra knight or bishop, and also an extra pawn. (You have the advantage of the exchange, while your opponent has an extra pawn in return for that disadvantage.)
Should you trade a bishop for a knight? Although the bishop and the knight are worth about the same, they are very different pieces, and each thrives in different kinds of positions. The bishop can zoom across the board, so it likes positions where the
pawns do not get in the way of its diagonals. The knight likes to find a secure square it can sit on in the middle of the action; its leaping ability means it’s not hampered by the presence of other pieces.
In the long run, pawns tend to get exchanged, so it’s not a bad bet that the bishop will become more powerful toward the end of the game. That is why I have said that the bishop is a teensy bit more powerful than the knight. But whether the bishop or the knight is really the better piece in any particular position is much more important than the long-term tendency for the bishop to become the stronger piece.
You’ll learn more about the relative value of the knight and the bishop in Chapter 10.
For now, consider them of about equal worth.
Patrick’s Pointers
Aim for the bishop in positions where it can find long diagonals, and
where it can move around a lot. Aim for the knight in positions with lots of pawns, especially when you can find a secure square for the knight,
where the pawns block the diagonals of your opponent’s bishop(s).
What About the King?
Notice that the king isn’t on the scale. Why not? Well, the loss of the king means the loss of the game, so you aren’t about to give up your king for another piece! In that sense, the king has an infinite value.
But it still makes sense to ask how powerful it is. After all, just because you dare not lose the king doesn’t mean that you can’t use it to attack and defend. The scale tries to give a relative weight to the power of each piece. Even though we can’t exchange the king for another piece, wouldn’t it be nice to know how powerful it is in relation to the other pieces?
Here’s the answer: It’s worth about 3 points, which is to say it’s about as powerful as the knight or the bishop. Just be careful when you use the king, though, because its importance goes far beyond its power!
How Do You Use This Scale?
Basically speaking, you always want to trade up when you can. If you can grab a pawn, do so. If you can give two pawns to get a bishop, that’s a good trade. If you can get a rook for three pawns, that’s an even better trade. And so on.
This is only a rough scale. It is not a perfect indication of the relative value of each piece. There are particular piece combinations that work well together, and particular piece combinations that don’t work so well together. There are also certain situations where some pieces’ values increase, while some other pieces’ values decrease. You will learn some of these situations in later chapters, and experience will teach you other situations. (See Chapter 16 for how to learn more once you finish this book.)
Patrick’s Pointers
It can be confusing to keep straight what the word “piece” means!
Sometimes it means a pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, or king.
Sometimes it means anything but a pawn, and sometimes it means only a rook, queen, or king. Look to the context to make it clear how it’s being used.
But although it is only a rough scale, it works very well. Grandmasters use it regularly. So should you.
Because the scale of the relative worth of the pieces is so useful, chess players sometimes use it to distinguish between three different kinds of pieces:
1. The pawn is not even called a piece at all! It is so low down on the scale that it does not deserve to be called a “piece,” so it is just called a pawn.
2. The bishop and the knight are called “minor pieces,” because they are not so powerful.
3. The rook and queen are sometimes called “major pieces,” but often they are just called “pieces,” since there is no need to give them another name to distinguish them from the pawn and from the bishop or knight.