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

Author: Peter Fendrich

Date: 09:09:06 04/02/04

Go up one level in this thread


On April 01, 2004 at 21:15:43, Dann Corbit wrote:

>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.

A very good idea that I support to 100%!
It should even be possible to write an adapter or open source code that
translates from the epd to the egtb format.
/Peter




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