Captures

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Captures are tactical moves changing material balance where an opponent piece is removed from the board as part of the completion of the move. This is either done by moving a piece to a square, which is occupied by the opponent captured piece - or as a special case of pawn takes pawn, en passant.

Winning captures are those with least valuable aggressor of most valuable victim, where even a recapture would win material, and captures of pieces en prise, that is the union of undefended ( hanging) pieces, as well as pieces defended inadequately. A static exchange evaluation might be applied to determine a victim is en prise or not. Equal captures are exchanges of equal valued pieces. Winning, as well as equal captures are subject of quiescence search. Some programs extend captures or recaptures under certain conditions, i.e. material becomes close to the root score again.

Capture Generation

With mailbox like square centric board representations, capture generation requires a so called blocker loop, while bitboards rely on attack generation and intersection with the set of opponent pieces.

Six times Take Five

CaptureBest caseWorst case
capturing with the pawn
pxQwinning queenpawn for queen
pxRwinning rookpawn for rook
pxBwinning bishoppawn for bishop
pxNwinning knightpawn for knight
pxPwinning pawnexchanging pawns
capturing with the knight
nxQwinning queenknight for queen
nxRwinning rookwinning the exchange
nxBwinning bishopexchanging minors
nxNwinning knightexchanging minors
nxPwinning pawnlosing knight for pawn
capturing with the bishop
bxQwinning queenbishop for queen
bxRwinning rookwinning the exchange
bxBwinning bishopexchanging minors
bxNwinning knightexchanging minors
bxPwinning pawnlosing bishop for pawn
capturing with the rook
rxQwinning queenrook for queen
rxRwinning rookexchanging rooks
rxBwinning bishoplosing exchange
rxNwinning knightlosing exchange
rxPwinning pawnlosing rook for pawn
capturing with the queen
qxQwinning queenexchanging queens
qxRwinning rooklosing queen for rook
qxBwinning bishoplosing queen for bishop
qxNwinning knightlosing queen for knight
qxPwinning pawnlosing queen for pawn
capturing with the king, always winning captures
kxQwinning queen
kxRwinning rook
kxBwinning bishop
kxNwinning knight
kxPwinning pawn

See also

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