Three piece are usually better than the Queen, even though they have the same point total. By that logic, a Bishop and a Knight should usually be better than an Archbishop.
Archbishop vs Bishop pair
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Casual_Joe wrote:
Three piece are usually better than the Queen, even though they have the same point total. By that logic, a Bishop and a Knight should usually be better than an Archbishop.
It clearly depends if the two minnors assist each other enough to offset the archbishops additional bonus point. AB's strength is intermediate between rook and queen.
A bishop and Knight always have the possibility of double-attacking the same target, whereas the AB can never do that. That's gotta be a +1 for the B+N.
On 8x8 board the AB gets an slight advantage, on 10x8 the increased power of the bishops over knights make the pair even stronger than Archbishop.
Archbishop also known as bishop-knight compound is estimated to be worth between 6.5 to 7.0 points - depending on board size.
Bishop pair is together worth around the same due to the additional 0.50 bonus.
Let us pretend the black f8 bishop is archbishop, who do you think have the advantage? Material is in balance.