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What Is a Centipawn Advantage?

https://win-vector.com/2026/02/19/what-is-a-centipawn-advantage/
19•jmount•3d ago

Comments

paulddraper•39m ago
Surprised it didn’t mention until the very end, but since chess is deterministic, there is no objective probability.

Every position is objectively plus infinity, minus infinity, or zero.

The “advantage” is an engine-specific notion that helps prune search paths.

Some chess engines don’t even evaluate an advantage.

ramses0•32m ago
"""under perfect play all chess games be a the same single one outcome of the following (we just currently don’t know which one, “A” playing the white pieces):

Mr. A says, “I resign” or Mr. B says, “I resign” or Mr. A says, “I offer a draw,” and Mr. B replies, “I accept.” That is, under perfect play, each chess position is either a forced win, forced draw, or forced loss. The domain of a perfect chess position evaluation function is these three cases as symbols."""

There's an interesting point I've heard of in Backgammon, somewhat related to this statement. Modern Backgammon offers "the doubling cube" as a play option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backgammon#Doubling_cube

...basically if you think you're going to win (aka: you have a 200 centi-pawn advantage), you can offer the doubling cube to your opponent (doubling the stakes of losing). If you're playing to win $5, and halfway through you think "yep, 90% chance I'm going to win this one...", you push the doubling cube to 2x (aka: $10 consequence), and kindof like poker your opponent has to evaluate whether it's "worth it" for them to stay in the game.

You might imagine a "2xELO penalty" where White takes a Queen with a Pawn, and then offers "2x, or I'm gonna beat 'ya!". If Black say "Naaah, you just activated my trap card!" and then either accepts "2x" or pushes back at "4x", then it becomes a little more like poker... you think you can beat me, then prove it!

Not that I'm suggesting changing the rules of Chess, but overall I'm really fascinated by the concept of formalized semi-out-of-band risk-taking to potentially end games early.

jmount•8m ago
This is an important point. Thank you.

Games like backgammon (that have betting and the doubling cube to continue), Go (which is calculated in stones), and bridge (again having points) have more natural intermediate scoring systems than chess.

In my opinion the "winner takes all" aspect of chess is similar to what makes analyzing voting systems difficult. In a non game context: Aspnes, Beigel, Furst, and Rudich had some amazing work on how all or nothing calculation really changes things: https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/papers/stoc91voting.pdf .

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What Is a Centipawn Advantage?

https://win-vector.com/2026/02/19/what-is-a-centipawn-advantage/
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