What you've done to my square counting idea is not what I had in mind. I'm looking at the numbers that you've posted and figuring you must've pretended each piece was on every square on the board and totaled the square counts that way. That's almost exactly what the Safe Check deal is. What I am thinking is the relative strength of the pieces as to where the will normally be deployed. Rare will it be that one will choose to play to the corner or edge a piece that is greatly lowered in movement there unless forced to do so. Since a Rook is equally mobile on every square it might be the exception to that. As for your conclusion that a Bishop is weaker than a Knight doing the counting this way, did you take into consideration that a Bishop can only travel on half the squares? Perhaps you should double its count for a more accurate estimate. Or some other way. Hmmm, it seems like the pieces that can move diagonal are the ones that have the most variable count and really are stronger when placed towards the center of the board. The pieces that have the Knight component without the diagonal move vary less. As soon as they're two squares from the edge they're at full range. OF course, two squares from the edge can be considered in the middle of the board. Just one square from the edge and they have full range minus two squares. A Knight having just one way of moving, has slow going on the larger board. The Knight's move itself is pretty handy when in close and has the benefit of not being able to be blocked.

I'm thinking that game experience and judgment might give a player a better guide than simple assigning a value to pieces. It's still nice to have a chart with the relative values just to assist in making trades and planning ahead. Especially for beginning players a chart can be of great help. Since the strengths and weaknesses of each piece change from move to move as the game progresses a better approach has to be to learn the game and get more experience. Least ways that's what I'm trying to do. I almost have the hang of how each piece works and am getting better at making longer range plans and detecting my opponent's intentions. The two extra pieces are quite strong and make the game more volitile the regular Chess even taking into account the larger board size. The one constant that remains is the King and the object of the game. Having more power on the board has definitely got to put him in more peril. Why range the whole board to count squares when one usually just focuses on the opponent's King and can concentrate one's forces in his area? If the game survives to the end game stage it is going to be more of a wide body Chess game than a completely different game that exists in the opening and middle parts.