What are the chances of survival for each chess piece?
What are the chances that each chess piece will survive the game? Programmer and chess player Oliver Brennan designed a program to calculate the probabilities of survival for each piece using data from 2.2 million master-level tournament games.
The kings have the highest survival rate, of course, because they can’t be taken. Rooks also tend to be hardy because they spend a lot of time at the back of the board and are generally more active in endgames. The knights and central pawns have the lowest survival rates. Many popular openings involve d and e pawns undertaking suicide missions, which are sometimes counter-attacked with c pawns. The wing pawns have a higher survival rate, prompting one forum user to comment, in what generally seems like a great rule for warfare, “If you can’t be the king, be the little guy hiding in the corner.”
What are the chances that each chess piece will survive the game? Programmer and chess player Oliver Brennan designed a program to calculate the probabilities of survival for each piece using data from 2.2 million master-level tournament games.
The kings have the highest survival rate, of course, because they can’t be taken. Rooks also tend to be hardy because they spend a lot of time at the back of the board and are generally more active in endgames. The knights and central pawns have the lowest survival rates. Many popular openings involve d and e pawns undertaking suicide missions, which are sometimes counter-attacked with c pawns. The wing pawns have a higher survival rate, prompting one forum user to comment, in what generally seems like a great rule for warfare, “If you can’t be the king, be the little guy hiding in the corner.”