Tempo

Home * Evaluation * Tempo

In chess, a tempo refers to a "turn" or single move. When a player achieves a result in one fewer move, he gains a tempo and when he takes one more move than necessary he loses a tempo.

=Force, Space and Time= Tarrasch's concept of force, space and time and their equivalence (to some extend) is considered by material (force), piece placement and center control (space) and roughly by mobility (space and time) inside the evaluation of a chess program. Whether gaining three tempos in a gambit opening is worth a pawn, is a matter of considering piece development and king safety issues related to center pawn structure (open/close, lever options) and castling abilities, f.i. estimating number of moves to castle, and certain long term deficiencies. Also, some programs better rely more or less on the opening book to play gambits well.

=Tempo Bonus= To avoid score oscillations on the parity of the search depth, some programs give a small bonus for having the right to move - the premise being that it is usually advantageous to be able to do something, except in the zugzwang positions. That bonus is useful mainly in the opening and middle game positions, but can be counterproductive in the endgame.

=See also=
 * Development
 * Gambit
 * Mobility
 * Null Move Observation
 * Odd-Even Effect
 * Score Oscillation


 * Opening
 * Side to move
 * Space
 * Standing Pat in Quiescence Search
 * Tempo (engine)
 * Transposition
 * Triangulation
 * Variable Null Move Bound
 * Zugzwang

=Forum Posts=

1997 ...

 * PROG: odd/even score alternance by Rémi Coulom, rgcc, June 5, 1997
 * pv score oscillation by Willie Wood, CCC, October 18, 1997

2000 ...

 * Bonus points for side to move in qsearch? by Leen Ammeraal, CCC, January 06, 2001
 * Testposition - The Vital Tempo by Sune Larsson, CCC, March 15, 2001
 * How to tune the bonus for having the move by Don Dailey, CCC, June 01, 2008
 * Side to Move Bonus - does it help? by Mark Lefler, CCC, May 29, 2009

2010 ...

 * Why works an oscillating TempoValue? by Marek Kwiatkowski, CCC, January 21, 2011
 * stand pat or side to move bonus by Larry Kaufman, CCC, March 22, 2012
 * First move advantage by Lyudmil Tsvetkov, CCC, June 19, 2013 » Opening
 * Symmetrical evaluation and endgame by Hamfer, OpenChess Forum, June 02, 2016 » Asymmetric evaluation
 * side-to-move bonus for several eval terms by Sander Maassen vd Brink, CCC, October 27, 2017

=External Links=
 * Tempo (chess) from Wikipedia
 * Tempo, a fundamental concept in chess from chessguru.net
 * Yamandu Costa - Tempo de Criança, 2003, YouTube Video

=References=

Up one Level