Author: José Carlos
Date: 07:27:41 10/16/03
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On October 16, 2003 at 10:05:23, Uri Blass wrote: >On October 16, 2003 at 09:56:59, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>On October 16, 2003 at 08:35:54, Uri Blass wrote: >> >>>Nalimov tablebases are not very important for endgames and they are not going to >>>change results in most of the endgames. >> >>This depends to a great extent on the engine, I think. The experiments I have >>seen which conclude that tablebases have no measurable effect on playing >>strength >>have always been conducted with strong engines like Yace and Crafty, which >>probably play excellent endgames even without tablebases. I expect that a >>program >>with little or badly tuned endgame knowledge will profit much more from >>tablebases. >> >>Tord > >Most of the mistakes in endgames are in positions when tablebaes cannot help. > >Maybe they can help if the program does not know to win KQ vs K but better >evaluation can solve this problem and more problems so I do not think that >tablebases is the right thing to add. > >Uri > >Uri KRPKR is hard without tablebases, same for KQKR, KBBK, KBBKN, KRKN and some others. The importance of tablebases is not only to play those endgames perfectly, but to choose the correct variation many moves before when you see those positions in the search and your eval is not enough. On the other hand, in Anubis I have chosen not to implement tablebases but good eval. IMO, a good eval is better because it's more general so you can evaluate endgames with many pawns, it's faster and you don't depend upon external files (this is important when you release your engine as freeware and other people don't have tablebases). Averno plays endgames badly without tablebases, probably worth 50 ELO or more (haven't checked it). José C.
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