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Subject: Re: Practical Tablebases (much smaller) ?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 20:40:08 11/15/01

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On November 14, 2001 at 18:23:25, William Penn wrote:

>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.

You are kidding, right?  Zugzwang is a _critical_ part of simple endings.
How can you _possibly_ overlook it as "quite rare".  It is actually _quite
common_.

>
>>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.

You can buy 70+ gigs for 120 bucks (US).

>
>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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