Author: bob o
Date: 17:53:16 05/28/02
Go up one level in this thread
>>It has been proven a few times that 6-man TBs don't make an engine "smarter", >>it just makes them play a prettier endgame. The 3/4/5's are really the only >>TBs you NEED to have. > >I don't see how such a thing could ever be "proven". First, there's the obvious >fact that as the number of men in the tablebases increases, the engine's game >must improve, since if it had access to 32-man tablebases, I think it might >play very well indeed. The problem, as I understand it, is that the access to the hard drive slows down the search. So if you had a position where you would get ~500 kn/s without tablebases, you would only get, say, ~200 kn/s with tablebases. They give more accurate evaluations for fewer positions, in other words. >Second, I fail to see why 5 should be some magic number for the maximum number >of men in the tablebases that are "needed" -- why not 4 or 7 or any other >number? Just because the 6-man tablebases are not yet complete does not render >them any less necessary than 3-4-5. The 6-man files already generated are generally things like krnknn, which almost never comes up. The ones that would matter more are the ones with pawns, such as krpkrp, since these occur in real games more frequently. The problem with generating tablebases with pawns is that you first need all the related ones without pawns, such as kqrkqr, kqrkrp, krrkrp, etc. 5 is not seen as a magic number, it's just the largest ones that current technology allows for. As an aside, current checkers programs can use 8-man checkers tablebases (the files are much smaller than chess tablebases). A fast computer can sometimes analyze a position that is just out of the opening book, and hit the tablebases on the first move that it searches. It can then know only a few moves into the game what the result will be, assuming the other program doesn't blunder. This helps delete losing book lines and improves the opening book immensely, as I understand. Bob
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