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Why don't we just make the bishop worth more points?

We're always saying that they are worth more. I know it depends on the position (open vs. closed; is the knight deep in the opponents position?), but more often than not bishops are superior.
Interesting, if one of these systems would be used in engines, would they play better?
There's a good question - I presume that such a system is used by engines for evaluation, but which one(s) is/are used and are there differences in them between engines?
The evaluation system in top engines is way more complicated than just using a static piece value.
multiply the bishops, add the squareroot of knights
result is your advantage :P
"We're always saying that they are worth more. I know it depends on the position (open vs. closed; is the knight deep in the opponents position?), but more often than not bishops are superior."

lol

Sorry I just don't understand why if you "know it depends on the position" why you'd then make a broad generalization that more often than not bishops are superior, and why you'd assume they should get a static point value that's higher.

Generally bishops are considered valuable in open positions and particularly valuable when you have the bishop pair (some people add an entire pawn in the evaluation if the position is open and you have the bishop pair and your opponent does not). But it's all situational. Take any bishop v knight endgame situation. Where are the pawns? The pawn structure will determine which is stronger. I've been in plenty of situations where I'd traded down to have the bishop in the endgame and then realized that I'd have much rather had a knight because the pawns were all wrong for the bishop to be any use. There's even semi-open games where one bishop is just plain bad (many French defense games for instance) or openings in which the power of the bishop is expended early to create a positional weakness in the pawn structure (Nimzo-Indian, French Winawer).

The idea of assigning static point values to any piece is really not a good way to evaluate a position, honestly...and it's why strong engines no longer do it this way.
A pawn that mates is superior to the most beautiful queens.

IMO piece value = number of reachable squares

Only the pawns and knights have value in the starting position.

So there!

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