Author: Mike Hood
Date: 04:01:33 10/11/01
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On October 10, 2001 at 16:06:42, Torstein Hall wrote: >On October 10, 2001 at 16:01:28, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On October 10, 2001 at 15:58:14, Torstein Hall wrote: >> >>>After about 5 hours of working my PC finaly managed to generate the 5 man >>>endgame KQBKQ. Makes me wonder, how much time the 6 man endgames must take! >>> >>>Torstein >> >> >>Some took hours on a Cray (Stiller). Figure months on a PC for those. >>No idea how long the really bad ones will take (kppkpp for example.) >>The promotion cases will certainly take a _long_ while... > >And they must be pretty large as well I guess. :-) > >And while we are talking about it, any idea what is the most important 5 piece >endgames to generate? The one who is most often encountered in real games, >should be the ones to have I guess! The question is difficult to answer. My impression is that the main value of the tablebases in chess play isn't when only the 5 pieces are left on the board, it's when there are 6 or 7 pieces and the engines are using the TBs a few moves along their search path. Using tablebases causes engines in an already winning position to make sacrifices that lead to a quick mate rather than fighting doggedly to keep their material advantage. Some of the sacrifices are admittedly very bizarre. In an engine-engine match Crafty swapped his Queen for two Pawns to enter the KNPKP tablebase (from a KQNP-KPPP position where a "normal" player would have spent a dozen moves chasing the pawns with his Knight). My advice is... if you have enough disk space, install them all. It's not a mistake. >So tonight my PC will have to work a little bit again I think! > >Torstein
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