This system has some shortcomings. Combinations of pieces do not always equal the sum of their parts; for instance, two bishops are usually worth slightly more than a bishop plus a knight, and three minor pieces (nine points) are often slightly stronger than two rooks (ten points) or a queen (nine points) , . Chess-variant theorist Betza identified the 'leveling effect', which causes reduction of the value of stronger pieces in the presence of opponent weaker pieces, due to the latter interdicting access to part of the board for the former in order to prevent the value difference from evaporating by 1-for-1 trading. This effect causes 3 queens to badly lose against 7 knights, even though the added piece values predict that the knights player is two knights short of equality. In a less exotic case it explains why trading rooks in the presence of a queen-vs-3-minors imbalance favors the queen player, as the rooks hinder the queen, but not so much the minors.