Centipawn

Chess engines, programs that analyze positions and moves, use the centipawn to express small differences between positions. One hundred centipawns equal one pawn unit on that scale, so 35 centipawns are commonly displayed as 0.35. The usual abbreviation is cp.

The unit lets an engine rank positions more precisely than labels such as equal or better. It is not a physical fraction of a piece and does not measure only how many pieces each side retains. An engine evaluation also reflects king safety, activity, and future possibilities. Some modern engines additionally normalize the scale around expected results between programs of similar strength rather than a literal sum of pieces.

Consequently, +100 cp does not always mean White has exactly one extra pawn or a fixed probability of winning. Its practical meaning depends on the engine, version, position, and interface convention. A forced mate is also normally reported as mate in a number of moves rather than as an extremely large centipawn score.

A centipawn is a unit for scoring a position; centipawn loss measures how much a move worsened the position compared with the engine's preferred choice. The concepts are related but not interchangeable.