Joaquim wrote:

wrote:
I want to know the following data:
in a set of say: 1000 games

(a) how many pawns were killed?
(b) how many knights, quenns etc ...


is there any database awailable ???

any help would be appriciated

(Piece): (Moves) (%) (Captures) (%) (Captured) (%)
King: 91633 10 7723 4 -
-
Queen: 114673 12 33736 16 14845 7
Rook: 124627 13 30284 14 20708 10
Knight: 186355 19 41031 19 43087 20
Bishop: 157023 16 42147 19 38722 18
Pawn: 286219 30 61873 28 99432 45
Summarized: 960530 100 2 16794 100 216794 100

This seems to be a rather large sample, but I do not know the level of
play, I guess it must be averaged. The data is not surprising to me. I
wonder if it is really significative that Knights are more often
captured than Bishops (they make the same captures, though). I do not
play chess so I cannot explain this unexpected result, any idea?


It's probably quite random. There appears to be no indication that the
players
who produced these statistics are particularly strong. We weak players
make random moves, and don't have much of a clue about strategy or
tactics.

Thanks for your posts.

Mark


Joaquim

On Dec 30, 4:49 pm, "Mark Houlsby"
wrote:
I was referring to the fact that one may select/deselect
an option in ChessBase (or, indeed, in Fritz, etc.) which indicates, in
a small window at the bottom of the notation window, the material
imbalance, be it a Pawn, a Rook for a Knight, a Queen for a Knight, a
Bishop and two Pawns, whatever....

If I understand correctly what you refer to, Mark, that merely shows
the material imbalance in whatever position is at hand, e.g. after 1.d4
d5 2.c4 e6 3.cxd5 it would show White with an extra pawn, then after
3...exd5 it again shows equality. That is not very relevant to the OP's
question, which concerned the total number of pawns and pieces "killed"
in a sample of games.

Mark Houlsby wrote:

It's probably quite random. There appears to be no indication that the
players
who produced these statistics are particularly strong. We weak players
make random moves, and don't have much of a clue about strategy or
tactics.

I agree. It would be interesting to compare the results above with
another set obtained in a "computer vs computer" long match, assuming
then "perfect play". However, from the results in that table perhaps
one might conclude that "weak" or "average" players are more
conservative with their bishops (B) than with their knights (N), e.g.
you would rather exchange or sacrifice Ns than Bs. The table above
points out that the stronger the piece is (in terms of the player's
view), the higher its "live expectancy". As a matter of fact, I think
that the "captures" column above is the only one which somehow
correlates well with the theoretical strength of each piece (I don not
know how experts evaluate that). So yes, maybe it is random, but then
it is also "real life chess". Or just nonsense.

wrote:
I want to know the following data:
in a set of say: 1000 games

(a) how many pawns were killed?
(b) how many knights, quenns etc ...


is there any database awailable ???

any help would be appriciated


I answered this on rec.games.chess.analysis, but you did not cross post.
Please do so in future. It saves people repeating themselves.

Anyway, ChessDB

http://sourceforge.net/projects/chessdb

which is

* Free
* Runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and UNIX
* Open-source
* Support for 12 langages


will do what you want. It has a material search

http://chessdb.sourceforge.net/tutor...h_material.php

which is quite sophisticated. Looking at a small database of 1305 games
(my own in this case). I find.

1) No knights on the board at the end in 517 of the 1305 games
2) One white knight, but no black knights in in 451 games
3) One black knight, but no white knights in 425 of 1305 games.
4) Both sides having two pawns on the end in 90/1305 games.
5) 0 pawns on the board in 36 of 1305.
6) Both sides having no material at all (hence a draw) in 4/1305
7) White having two biships, but black no bishops in 73 of 1305.
8) Both sides having two queens in 0/1305
9) White having two queens, but black only 1 in 2/1305 games.
10) White having two queens, but black 0 queens in 9/1305

etc etc. Using its filters one could do more. For example, use only
playes in a certain ELO range, or games played in 1997 etc etc.

I don't know if the commerical databases will do this, but ChessDB will
cost you nothing to use. Try it.

--
Dave (from the UK)

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form:
Hitting reply will work for a few months only - later set it manually.

http://witm.sourceforge.net/ (Web based Mathematica front end)

Joaquim wrote:

Mark Houlsby wrote:

It's probably quite random. There appears to be no indication that the
players
who produced these statistics are particularly strong. We weak players
make random moves, and don't have much of a clue about strategy or
tactics.

I agree. It would be interesting to compare the results above with
another set obtained in a "computer vs computer" long match, assuming
then "perfect play". However, from the results in that table perhaps
one might conclude that "weak" or "average" players are more
conservative with their bishops (B) than with their knights (N), e.g.
you would rather exchange or sacrifice Ns than Bs. The table above
points out that the stronger the piece is (in terms of the player's
view), the higher its "live expectancy". As a matter of fact, I think
that the "captures" column above is the only one which somehow
correlates well with the theoretical strength of each piece (I don not
know how experts evaluate that). So yes, maybe it is random, but then
it is also "real life chess". Or just nonsense.

Or random, "real life chess" *and* nonsense. Or random and not strictly
chess at all (at least as it is understood by Grandmasters or, in stark
contrast, as it is calculated by computer programs), or....

Looking at a small database of 1305 games
(my own in this case). I find.

1) No knights on the board at the end in 517 of the 1305 games
2) One white knight, but no black knights in in 451 games
3) One black knight, but no white knights in 425 of 1305 games.
4) Both sides having two pawns on the end in 90/1305 games.
5) 0 pawns on the board in 36 of 1305.
6) Both sides having no material at all (hence a draw) in 4/1305
7) White having two biships, but black no bishops in 73 of 1305.
8) Both sides having two queens in 0/1305
9) White having two queens, but black only 1 in 2/1305 games.
10) White having two queens, but black 0 queens in 9/1305

Just for curiosity, could you look into your database the number of
games out of 1305 which end with (a) and excess of n bishops over
knights regardless of their color, for n=1 and for n=2; and (b) the
other way round?