soheil_hooshdaran wrote:Hello.
What does the following terms mean?
lack of space
lack of development
lack of mobility
Do they mean complete lack of, or not having enough of something? Is there a more relaxed version of these expressions?
Thanks in advance
Seeing that no one is taking this question seriously I'll have a go, reordering the questions in ease of answering:
I'm interpreting "lack of" as meaning essentially "significantly less than the other side has" and consider how each can be objectively-ish measured.
Lack of Development.
This is actually defined fairly clearly and unanimously in the literature. It obviously refers only to the opening phase of the game. Count the number of pieces (not pawns) that each side has moved and add one if a side has castled. That's a measure of development and is a useful thing to do frequently in an unfamiliar opening. The theme of many openings is to encourage the other side to spend time moving pawns or to frighten the other side's already developed pieces to new squares in order to improve relative development. Of course, moving pawns may contribute to other objectives like improving mobility or gaining space. There are also occasions when the ideal development position for a piece is its home square and of course developing a piece to an inappropriate square is not useful. But hey - these calculations are intended to give an initial assessment that can be fine-tuned later by other considerations.
An alternative definition (Hans Berliner) is as follows:
1 point for each piece in a good developed position (including unmoved pieces)
1 point if the king is in a safe position (sometimes, but not necessarily castled)
1 point for each of the centre two pawns moved from its initial square
1 point for each rook on an open file or a file where its own pawn has reached the 5th rank.
1 extra point for a knight if it is safely in the centre.
This tries to address some of the caveats given under the 'classical' method described above, but is a lot more complicated and involves making a host of other value judgements before starting on the calculation. As will be clear, I prefer the rule of thumb approach.
Lack of Space
When this phrase is used it is probably usually touchy-feely, but an objective measure is possible, though somewhat tedious to calculate. For example, you could count the number of squares each side controls. Control of a square is not about whether there is anything on it or not. One definition in use: a square is controlled by a side if that side has a pawn defending it and the other side does not, or if neither side has a pawn defending it then it is controlled if one side can safely place a minor piece there and the other side can not. [Note: this a theoretical piece. If in fact no minor piece can actually get to the square at the current moment this does not alter control of the square]. This is not entirely satisfactory because centre squares are a lot more useful to control and therefore a more sophisticated system would allocate more points for the centre. These sorts of calculations get done by some software when assessing positions, but most players stick to the touchy-feely.
Lack of Mobility.
As far as I'm aware there's not a clear definition for a measure of mobility. I offer two:
a) How many of your pieces can be safely moved to another square?
b) How many safe piece moves are there on the board?
If there's a big difference between the scores for the two sides it is probably an indication that the side with less mobility can initiate very little and must sit back and withstand a siege. On the whole it strikes me this is the least useful question to ask: if you are developed and have space you probably have mobility anyway.
These measures are for rough guidance and results from the three categories cannot just be added together. Computers, if they try to measure these things, have to do so and so the programmer has to develop a method of combining the measures, but human brains don't have the time for that.