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Subject: Re: Match Junior 6a - Tiger 12e (40 in 2 hr, 20 in 1hr) completed...

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:20:50 03/27/00

Go up one level in this thread


On March 27, 2000 at 11:15:23, blass uri wrote:

>On March 27, 2000 at 09:53:57, Ed Schröder wrote:
>
>>On March 27, 2000 at 09:06:01, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On March 25, 2000 at 23:13:49, Tina Long wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 25, 2000 at 14:28:13, James Robertson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On March 25, 2000 at 13:41:28, Roger wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Would tablebases for Tiger have changed this result at all?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Roger
>>>>>
>>>>>Maybe a quarter of a point.... My experience with tablebases is that if the
>>>>>program is moderately smart it doesn't benefit tremendously from them.
>>>>>
>>>>>James
>>>>>
>>>>Ed Schroder said about 6 months ago that Tablebases were worth about 10 points
>>>>on the SSDF scale.
>>>>
>>>>I'm 70% sure he said that! I'm 100% sure that Ed said once that something was
>>>>worth very little rating points.
>>>>
>>>>I'm glad I could add some real detail to this discussion.
>>>>
>>>>Tina Long
>>>
>>>
>>>Ed is wrong there.  it is _amazing_ how many comp vs comp games end up in
>>>krp vs kr, with the side without tablebases losing most of those.  There are
>>>other endings too (KQP vs KQ, see for example crafty vs nimzo in the ICCT
>>>tournament last month).
>>>
>>>The wrong way to test this is to play A with, vs A without.  the right way to
>>>test this is A without vs B without, then A with vs B without.  But A ought to
>>>be reasonably close to B without tablebases...
>>
>>Tablebases have a great future no doubt. But what is available at the
>>moment (4-5 pieces) its value for Rebel is not more than 5-10 elo I
>>would say because:
>>
>>a) most cases are simply covered by chess knowlegde;
>>
>>b) the loss of speed during search because of all the
>>disc access.
>
>I do not think that b is right because you save time by not searching positions
>of 5 pieces.
>
>disc access is relevant only after a capture that leads to 5 pieces on the
>board.
>My simple logic says that if you search n plies forward then you can decide to
>call tablebases only after a capture that leads to 5 pieces and only if the
>caprure is at distance of n-d plies from the root when d is the minimal numner
>that searching d plies forward is slower than calling tablebases.
>
>



That is all correct.  Disk access is _not_ a problem.  It doesn't slow me
down enough to be a problem at all, and the gain more than offsets the
I/O time...  and if you cache stuff right, and hash the results right, the
penalty drops to almost nothing for most positions...

And the gain...  :)



>The only loss of speed that I can see is in case that you have no tablebases
>calls because of checking one if command:
>
>If capture leads to 5 pieces and depth<=(n-d) then call tablebases.
>
>I guess that the loss of speed in this case is very small.
>>
>>So I don't think I am wrong when the subject is Rebel.
>>
>>Things might change dramatically when for instance the complete
>>6 pieces become available. +100 elo easily for chess programs.
>
>I guess that +100 elo is too optimistic even with 6 men tablebases.
>Uri



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