Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: to the author of SEE engine

Author: martin fierz

Date: 07:52:19 10/16/03

Go up one level in this thread


On October 16, 2003 at 10:27:41, José Carlos wrote:

>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.


in my last 50 tournament games i didn't have a single one of these endgames you
mention. i can't imgaine that tablebases make a 50 elo difference. KBBK is
practically trivial, even without tablebases!

cheers
  martin



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.