Round 3 of 2016 LCCC League Championship Complete

Even Doctor, Bobby Fischer second, IM Anthony Saidy still studies!

Fourteen players in attendance - including two new players!

We welcome Heidi and Rob to LCCC tonight. And of course they found players to have a casual game with while our tournament was going on.

The winners in the league games tonight:
Vince V - (tournament leader!)
Luke S
Paul M
Ken T
Riley B

Congratulations to the winners. The pairings for round 4 will be published here as soon as they are out.

 Instead of a puzzle or a game this article - how about a little chess trivia?

It's been asked of this chess instructor "Where did the point system for evaluating the strength of the pieces originate? (ie, queen = 9, rook = 5, pawn =1, etc.)"

Howard Staunton rated bishops higher than knights and two rooks ahead of a queen in his 1847 handbook. But he never gave pieces a numerical value.

The Oxford Companion to Chess says, "The point values was devised in the early 19th century by Peter Pratt, an English player and author.

Pratt put a
pawn at 1,
a knight at 3.05,
a bishop at 3.5,
a rook at 5.48
and a queen at 9.94.

Today's standard is
Pawn = 1
Knight = 3
Bishop = 3
Rook = 5
Queen = 9

But remember - piece value is relative and really changed based on their placement and the type of position or structure of the position. For example, knights are usually better in cramped positions over bishops.

The first computers had to use numerical values in the programs. One popular system used was:
Pawn = 2
Bishop = 7
Knight = 8
Rook = 14
Queen = 27
King = 1000 (so the computers would not exchange it for another piece - ever!)

So that is the early history as described by GM Larry Evans in the December 2003 issue of Chess Life.

See you Monday at LCCC for casual chess night!