How Many Pieces from Both Sides can you Place on a Chess Board Without Attacking a Side?

Question

How many pieces can you organize on a Chess board without one side being attacked by the other? This scoring will be used to prove you have the highest.

Piece cost:

Pawn - 1
Knight - 3
Bishop - 3
Rook - 5
Queen - 9

Rules:

Both sides must have the same pieces on the board
Your score is totalled by only 1 side
One color cannot attack the other
No king allowed.

Is there restriction on the number of pieces of each type that can be used? If not, the eight queens should be the baseline, scoring 36. — LeppyR64, Oct 14 '14 at 22:52

Joel Rondeau · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-15T01:46:12.377

15

From the bottom up:

Three rows of 8 black queens
One row of black pawns
One row of white pawns
Three rows of white queens

224.

Because the black pawns attack down and the white pawns attack up, they can be placed next to each other without attacking each other.

224 Points

edited Oct 15 '14 at 01:46

answered Oct 14 '14 at 23:54

Joel Rondeau

7,540
1
30
44

Can you provide a picture? – warspyking Oct 14 '14 at 23:57
1

Here you go. – Oct 15 '14 at 00:05
The pawns attack eachother in your answer. – warspyking Oct 15 '14 at 00:50
5

@warspyking white moves up the board, so the black pawns are behind them meaning they can't attack – Joe Oct 15 '14 at 00:55
Oh... I guess that makes sense. – warspyking Oct 15 '14 at 01:06
http://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/2872/how-many-chess-pieces-are-needed-to-control-every-square-on-the-board – d'alar'cop Oct 15 '14 at 01:14
that is not right, they should be in front of each other, this is a kind of loophole – Elgert Oct 15 '14 at 07:33
@Elgert Even if you invert the colours, removing one line of queens in favour for one empty row between the pawns still gives a pretty maximal solution - and the principle of the solution is unchanged. – oerkelens Oct 15 '14 at 14:54
@oerkelens there is a better solution than leaving a empty row between the pawns – Elgert Oct 15 '14 at 14:58

Joel Rondeau · Answer 2 · 2014-10-15T19:18:17.803

8

Although I like my first answer, I did also wonder how good I could manage with black and white in their normal positions. The best I've gotten so far uses 16 queens, 4 rooks, 4 bishops and 4 pawns.

180.

180 Points

edited Oct 15 '14 at 19:18

answered Oct 15 '14 at 15:18

Joel Rondeau

7,540
1
30
44

I believe you can change D6 -> black pawn, E3 -> white rook, E4 -> white pawn to gain 3 points – Joe Oct 15 '14 at 15:30
@Joe Both sides must have same pieces. White would have 1 more rook than black. – Joel Rondeau Oct 15 '14 at 15:33
Ah, I forgot the same-pieces argument. How very dull. – Joe Oct 15 '14 at 15:36
Yeah, I know. Without it, I'm pretty sure I could manage 576. – Joel Rondeau Oct 15 '14 at 15:40
@Joel You know the white side can have black pieces right? – warspyking Oct 15 '14 at 19:43
@warspyking Yes, but I haven't come up with a way to do that and get a higher score than 180 (you know, excluding my 224) – Joel Rondeau Oct 15 '14 at 19:47
Then again that'd be pretty hard to do anything with. – warspyking Oct 15 '14 at 19:54

How Many Pieces from Both Sides can you Place on a Chess Board Without Attacking a Side?

2 Answers2