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H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Sep 29 12:07 PM UTC in reply to David Paulowich from 02:26 AM:

EGT on plain 8x8 boards can be generated with FairyGen, and I can confirm that Dragon Horse beats Knight there. As well as Bishop, Nightrider, Woody Rook (WD), Modern Elephant (FA), Phoenix (WA). It cannot beat a Commoner, though. But that is no surprise; even a Queen cannot beat a Commoner, when the latter is connected with its King. (Because the enemy King cannot approach it.)

Mate with Knight + Alibaba is an interesting case. The Alibaba is a 'potent' piece because of its D move, so if you can drive the bare King to a corner the Alibaba can reach, checkmating is easy. But of course the Alibaba can only acces 1/4 of the board, and on 8x8 there always is a single corner it can reach. (The Alibaba is also 'forking' in those corners, and together with the 'semi-potent' Knight it can also force an edge mate there, but that doesn't provide extra possibilities.) Apparently it is too difficult for Knight + Alibaba to drive the bare King to the deadly corner from any of the other corners, so the end-game is a general draw, with only 1% of the positions with black on move a forced loss. (Presumably because the bare King is already trapped in the deadly corner there.)

On 9x9 this goes up to 24%. In this case all corners are equivalent, and 1 of the 4 Alibaba placements (31% to be exact) allows forcing of checkmate in all 4 corners. When stalemating is a win 77% of the positions with black on move is lost. (And 99.3% of the positions with white on move is won.)


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