Author: Peter Berger
Date: 11:21:55 03/28/01
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On March 28, 2001 at 11:07:04, Christophe Theron wrote: First : thank you very much for posting this FAQ : it is much appreciated . I really think it answers a lot of questions that have been asked here recently. > >Q: How can I have the new Tiger engines using tablebases ? > > A: there are several options: > > OPTION 1: purchase the Endgame Turbo CD from ChessBase > (www.chessbase.com). > Once it is installed, all the Tiger engines (that is > Rebel-Tiger, ChessAssistant Tiger and ChessBase Tiger) > will automatically detect that the endgame CD has been > installed and will start to use the tablebases. > There is no further configuration step required. Just > install the CD and you are done. > > OPTION 2: purchase the endgame CD from ChessAssistant > (www.chessassistant.com). > As in the above case, the installation procedure > is very simple. > > OPTION 3: download the endgame tablebases files for free from the > Internet. Be prepared to several days (or weeks) of > downloading if you want the full set (more than 6Gb). > The tablebases are available from: > ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/TB > (thanks to Prof. Robert Hyatt and Eugene Nalimov) > I'd like to add an OPTION 4 which is absolutely free and seems to be forgotten most of the time when people talk about the tablebases here. OPTION 4 : Simply build them for yourself FOR FREE . a.) The simple part : the 4-men-tablebases Those are very easy to build for yourself on any usual computer availlable and already will do a very reasonable job that might be all you want when you compair prices : 0 to the prices of a download or a "Fritz Endgame Turbo " . Courtesy to Mogens Christian Larsen : A quick guide on how to generate 3- and 4-piece compressed Nalimov yourself using tbgen. 1.) Download tbexe.zip from Dr. Hyatts ftpsite and unzip it. 2.) Run tbgen.exe with the switches "-m 10 -p kpkp kppk" to generate all 3- and 4-man tables. It takes about two hours on a PII-400MHz. 3.) Compress each file separately using datacomp.exe with the switch "e:8192", ie. "datacomp e:8192 knk.nbb". 4.) The result would be a compressed file called knk.nbb.emd. If you don't want to compress every single file one by one, a bat file might prove useful (see 7.). 5.) Remember to delete the uncompressed Nalimov tables when you're done, because they're not necessary anymore. 6.) It's possible to generate the 5-piece tables as well, but that depends on hardware. Read the accompanying documentation (contained in tbgen.zip) to find out how. 7.) Documentation about the use of tbgen (including how to generate 5-piece tables) and a batfile for use with datacomp is available for download. b.) The 5-men tablebases Courtesy to Antonio Senatore : A complete 5 men set will almost take you 2 weeks with a Pentium II/450Mz system. It's not necesary for you to have 512 MB of RAM if you have a big enough swap file (let's say 512 MB) and make the tablebases step by step. If you want to try making them, please follows the next steps: 1. Make sure of having a swap file (virtual memory) of 512 MB. 2. Get the TBGenm or TBgeni file from ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-engines/new-approach/TBGEN.ZIP (I think that you already have them) 3. Generate a complete 3 and 4 men set in a NON-COMPRESSED format (it will take him about 2 hours) 4. To generate a complete 5 men set, you must proceed to build them one by one, by starting for those that don't have pawns. For example: Suppose that you are interested in building the KRPKR table, then to make this you should begin building the KRNKR table, next the KRBKR table, after the KRRKR table, then the KRQKR table for recently then to finish with the KRPKR. Proceeding in that way the use of RAM is minimum. AN IMPORTANT THING: to generate the tablebases you MUST USE the next statement: tbgenm -m -p -v -d or tbgeni -m -p -v -d where is the amount of virtual memory, not the of RAM memory! is the dir where you have the 3 and 4 men set. Let's say C:\TB So, if you want to build the KRNKR table then the statement would be (supposing a swap file of 512 MB): tbgenm -m 512 -p -v -d C:\TB KRNKR or tbgeni -m 512 -p -v -d C:\TB KRNKR The parameter -p forces the use of virtual memory. Once built the tablebases, you will be able to compress them with the program Datacomp.exe. Lastly, with less than 512 MB of virtual memory (let's say 256 MB) you will be able to build all the tablebases except the KRPKQ. Try to make one tablebase by day! Regards and I apologize for my english (I speak spanish). Antonio I agree this isn't completely basic but probably not too big a problem for the common CCC reader and I think this might encourage some to save some valuable money ( they can use it to buy Tiger 14 instead for example ;-) ) . This and similar IMHO very interesting information is availlable on Aaron Tay's WinBoard FAQ that can be reached at http://server3005.freeyellow.com/aarontay/Winboard/winboard.html Regards. pete
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