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Subject: Re: The importance of tablebases with programs.. freeware vs commercial

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 18:49:35 06/06/02

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My guess is that a commercial engine's evaluation functions are probably better
than the amateur engine's evaluation routines, along with more sophisticated
search (better extentions, pruning, etc.) and with the reduced number of pieces
(and therefore legal moves), the engines can probably see quite deep into an
endgame position especially when compared with some of the amateur programs you
mentioned. Add into that some handling of some special cases, and it's not
suprising to see that the commercial engine's play endgames with good accuracy.

I suppose that the suprising thing is not that the commercial programs play the
endgame well, but that the top amateur programs do not play the endgame as well,
such as Crafty and Yace. Perhaps it is an unspoken compliment to the authors of
the commercial engine's and we underestimate the difference in strength between
the top amateur engine's and the top commercial engines.

Russell



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