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Subject: Re: Practical Tablebases (much smaller) ?

Author: William Penn

Date: 15:23:25 11/14/01

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On November 13, 2001 at 10:09:30, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>How would you handle all the common zugzwang positions?  black king at e6,
>white king at e4, white pawn at e3.  White to move draws.  Black to move
>loses.

I would probably disregard them as being fairly infrequent in practical play
between chess masters.

>There are plenty of positions where underpromotion is the only way to avoid a
>stalemate.  That would convert many wins into draws.

Stalemate is quite rare in practical play between chess masters and can be
disregarded.

>7.5 gigs is a trivial amount of disk space today, with new machines usually
>coming with at least a 60 gig drive.

Well, my hard drive is 12GB, so the size of the TBs is a factor for me.

Via simplifying assumptions based on the relative rarity of certain situations
in practical play, I think the endgame tablebases could be reduced to no more
than 1GB and still contain most of the strength which they presently offer to a
chess program. In other words rather than an elegant and complete endgame
solution, an incomplete (but sufficient) set of tables is probably do-able. But
I don't know how to code it.
WP



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