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Subject: Re: to the author of SEE engine

Author: Ross Boyd

Date: 07:29:25 10/16/03

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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

Hi Tord,
After adding EGTB support to TRACE her rating improvement was barely measurable.
I think it was 6 elo after at least 200 games.
And she is definitely an engine that lacks endgame knowledge. :-)

Often I see TRACE swindle a draw in R+PvR endgames and sometimes she swindles a
RvB endgame for a win. But accessing the egtbs is very slow so frequently she
loses because her NPS is severely hampered..

Uri is right when he says the game is usually over before the egtbs can come to
the rescue.

So, the main benefit for TRACE has been knowing well in advance that she will be
checkmated in 47 moves with best play... :-)

Ross










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