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Subject: Re: Why dont engines support the egtb format that Chessmaster uses?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 18:15:43 04/01/04

Go up one level in this thread


On April 01, 2004 at 20:40:58, Eugene Nalimov wrote:

>On April 01, 2004 at 19:05:09, Dann Corbit wrote:
>
>>On April 01, 2004 at 18:38:59, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>On April 01, 2004 at 18:29:27, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>
>>>>On April 01, 2004 at 17:59:38, Eugene Nalimov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On April 01, 2004 at 15:16:34, Marc Bourzutschky wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>The Chessmaster format is indeed better
>>>>>
>>>>>What does it mean "better"? :-)
>>>>>
>>>>>It stores less information, thus compresses better.
>>>>
>>>>I have an idea that I think would be helpful if you should be so kind as to
>>>>perform it.
>>>>
>>>>Write a scanner that reads your wonderful EGTB files and spits out a two bit
>>>>state only for each position (won/lost/drawn/broke) to create bitbase files.
>>>>
>>>>The reason I suggest it is that a bazillion programmers won't have to reinvent
>>>>the wheel.
>>>>
>>>>I suggest the use of the bitbase files early in the search (completely pulled
>>>>into ram) and then EGTB at the leaves if the bitbase indicates it is worthwhile.
>>>
>>>You must mean it the opposite way, bitbases at the leaves and EGTBs a near root?
>>>
>>>I think it would be better to use bitbases in the entire search and only use
>>>full EGTBs when the position is at the root.
>>>
>>>Or, if you want the search to eventually return mate scores, probe EGTBs when
>>>bitbases say it is won and beta>=mate_bound or bitbases says it lost and
>>>alpha<=-mate_bound.
>>>Perhaps probing directly into EGTBs when window allows it would be faster,
>>>matter of tuning of course.
>>
>>I guess I had not thought about it carefully enough.  I imagined using bitbases
>>to get a won/lost/drawn opinion (at all nodes).  But unless you know the exact
>>value of the leaves, I don't see how you can choose the best move.
>>
>>I imagined something like this:
>>If the best evaluation is drawn or lost, who cares.  Do whatever move is among
>>the suggested list.
>>If the best evaluation is won, then:
>>Examine the bottom leaves that are won and perk the correct values back up.
>>
>>How will we otherwise find the true value?  I am afraid I don't understand how
>>it can work.
>
>In my "TODO" list. But let me finish 6-men TBs first...
>
>Simple way is to keep both w/d/l and full tables. You need to probe full table
>only when position is OTB. Otherwise you probe w/d/l table. W/d/l tables are
>smaller, and relevan ones can be always loaded to RAM, so you can probe them
>everywhere in the search, including Q-search.
>
>Probing of the full TBs can be much slower than it is now, probably ~1 sec
>should be fine. In theory that allows to use better decompression algorithm.
>
>And you don't need 2 bits per position. 1.6 bits are enough (5 positions per
>byte).

How about an interface to your EGTB system that takes a standard EPD string as
input?

That way, it would be really simple for people to interface to it that have not
already done so.  Just about every chess program has a "convert board position
to EPD" function of some kind.



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