Minor Pieces vs Queen

I think minors would win in my opinion

I assume 4 bishops win also, but only if they are two pairs of each color?

Doubt it. I generated 10 random (semi-legal ply count 0) positions with two pairs of each colour (5 wtm & 5 btm) and checked with Syzygy. Only 3 out of the 10 were wins for the bishops. (What did the "also" mean?)

4 knights easily win against a queen so was curious about 4 bishops.

Oh I just realized how weird this thread got..people talking about bishops and minors..

4 knights don't win easily against a queen - read #40.

If you're curious about 4 bishops you can repeat what I did for two bishops of each

colour with other distributions of colours to get a rough idea.

minor pieces can attack from multiple angles simultaneously, while the queen cannot. The same for defense.

That's backward. The Queen can attack from multiple lines simultaneously, but you can't move more than 1 minor piece at a time. It's more accurate to say minor pieces can guard more squares at a time than the queen. But the queen can still easily escape.

If it a pawnless endgame,four minor pieces will always beat a queen,unless they are four bishops are on the same color.

"Always" = less than half of the time.

Read Marattigan's comment (#41).

good

BBNN generally win against a queen. Example:

One swallow does not a summer make.

If the bishops can be either on the same or different coloured coloured squares, White wins about 38% of positions in the Syzygy tablebase (ply count 0 positions if competition rules are in force).

I tried checking 5 random White to play and 5 random Black to play positions with the bishops on different coloured squares with the Syzygy tables. The result was 6 White wins, 3 Black wins and 1 draw. Not a large sample, but what would you class as "generally"?

The result strongly favours the side to move. E.g. Black to play in your position is a draw.

@54

Take 2 knights and 2 bishops on different color squares: that is the only combo that makes sense.

That's what I did.

@56

Of course the BBNN should mutually defend each other as soon as possible.
If the queen can chip off a piece with some double attack, then it is 3 pieces vs. queen.

@57

Precisely. But obviously in a substantial percentage of cases, "as soon as possible" is not soon enough.

@58

You arrived at 6-1-3 in favor of the 4 pieces.
How many of those were trivial, i.e. lead to immediate loss of a piece or loss of the queen?
Can the queen ever save the game when the 4 pieces defend each other?

@59

I didn't save the positions so I can't say, but I remember that the queen could be immediately captured in the first two White (with the minor pieces) to play positions and at least two of the Black to play positions allowed the immediate capture of a piece. More where immediate forks and skewers were possible. It doesn't take too long so you can try the exercise yourself.

Trivial positions are positions nevertheless.

As for the second question - I don't know. You could try the same approach with randomly generated positions in which the side with the minor pieces has mutually defending pieces. I'd expect a substantial increase in that side's win percentage.

If you want an exact answer and you don't come up with any counterexamples (best trying queen's side to play for that) you're probably reduced to downloading the tablebase and writing a program to exhaustively check (which could take some time to run).

Of course it would be safe to say that the side with the minor pieces generally wins from positions which are won by the side with the minor pieces.

@tygxc

The side with the queen wins here

And draws here, but wins if Black opts to protect all his pieces with 1...Ng3 (or 1...Be2, if you count that) .