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Subject: Re: CM9000 which EGTB format?

Author: John Merlino

Date: 16:27:09 09/24/02

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On September 24, 2002 at 18:30:14, Robert Pawlak wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I know that CM uses it's own file format. But what I am wondering is which
>format (Nalimov, Edwards) it is most similar to. For instance, does it use
>distance to conversion, or distance to mate? Or both?
>
>Anyone know?
>
>Thanks
>Bob

It uses DTM. In one section of the documentation for FEG (the name of the
generator), it says:

---------------
Q: What EGDBs have actually been built?
A: In the 1970's there was quite some reasearch on the topic. However, it
became interesting after Ken Thompson dedicated a machine for several
years to produce most of the interesting 5 piece EGDBs (DTC), and
eventually made them available on CD for free. In the early 90's Stiller
did some work on a massive parallel system on 6 pieces, but he couldn't
save the data. In the meanwhile Edwards redid the 5 pieces for DTM but
mainly for research, without compression. Nalimov redid them again, but
used compression (better than Thompson's, but still larger because of
DTM). Nalimov's have been widely used since 1999. This is all public
knowledge. Not public were the Koning & Kuijf experments, done since
1995. These experiments were targeted at building EGDBs fast, and
succeeded in being fast. Though the actual data is more or less the same
as Nalimov's.
---------------

So, I guess that the last sentence answers your question.

I would suggest going to www.chessmaster.com and downloading FEG. Just click on
the "Endgame Databases" link on the left side, in the "Downloads" section. The
entire download is less than 100K, and it includes quite a bit of interesting
documentation (so I'm told).

jm



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