Author: Uri Blass
Date: 22:14:59 06/06/02
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On June 06, 2002 at 18:22:46, Kevin Strickland wrote: >I have been running engine matches, as well as an account on ICC with different >engines and have noticed somethings. > >1. Crafty greatly improves in the endgame with the tablebases in use. It plays >fine without them but does incredibly better with them. This goes for almost all >freeware/shareware programs. > >2. The commercial programs I have tested are Fritz, Junior, Shredder, Chess >Tiger, Gambit Tiger. With these programs they do extremely well without the >tablebases. In fact I have seen that the two Tigers play with almost no >difference at all. The commercial programs just seem to "know" the endings I >have seen. The Tigers are definately proof of this. > >3. The only commercial program that seems to "need" the tablebases is Nimzo. For >whatever reason it just plays endgames horribly without them. > >4. Of the commercial programs that _don't_ use the tablebases it is a saw off of >which is better. Goliath Blitz and Rebel seem to play endgames very well without >them. The winboard Goliath Blitz does not do well, but in the Chess Academy >interface it does very well. I have it outscoring Fritz 7 23-17 thus far in 40/2 >matches. > >5. The program that benefits the most out of all the engines that I tested is >without question Yace. The difference in play with/out them is great. I am >surprised by this. I think that the question which program earn most from tablebases is also a question of the style of the program. A program that does not get a lot of endgames when tablebases are relevant is going to earn less from tablebases. Another point is that some programs earn more from tablebases because they know to use the tablebases better. Some programs may even lose from tablebases if they waste too much time on tablebases positions and prefer perfect information and not searching deeper. It is known that Nimzo deleted it's endgame knowledge after installing tablebases and old versions of Nimzo could play the endgame better without tablebases so in the case of Nimzo the programmer chose to have a bad program without tablebases. Uri
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