Author: GuyHaworth
Date: 03:43:44 06/28/03
Go up one level in this thread
Ken Thompson's EGTs were first distributed by Ken personally on 4 CDs and then
by Chessbase, which I guess does not sell them now. ken's CDs had the
installation advice on them; maybe this was not on the Chessbase ones.
If, after reading below, you still want to install Ken's EGTs, I think you would
need a copy of Ken's original CDs.
Ken's was the first initiative to make EGTs widely available across many
endgames, and his EGTs set a new benchmark.
Engines like Fritz and Shredder used to interface to them, but I suspect they do
not know. There was a big move in the ICCA's WCCC to the Nalimov EGTs within a
year of them being made available on Rob Hyatt's ftp site.
The reasons for this were:
a) completeness of coverage
b) runtime efficiency
The KT EGTs featured all 3-man, most 4-man endgames and many of the 5-man
endgames. They did not however feature more than one Pawn on the board: I
don't think Ken ever tackled e.p. (and certainly not 'castling rights', still
omitted today).
They also featured only White wins/does_not_win and had one side to move: can't
remember whether it was wtm or btm.
This meant that, operationally, they were not as efficient during a game as the
Nalimov EGTs, as half the time you were doing a 2-ply search instead of a 1-ply
search.
The index- and compression-methods of the Nalimov EGTs also bring some
efficiencies at runtime.
The KT endgames were to the DTC(onversion) metric, i.e. change of force and/or
mate, rather than to the DTM(ate) metric - as used by S.J.Edwards, Nalimov and
Bourzutschky (q.v. JdK's FEG and Chessmaster 9000).
Some, including me, can argue that the DTC metric is better than DTM as it hangs
onto more wins in the context of the 50-move limit.
However, even DTC is not ideal and there are much more effective/efficient
approaches to winning available endgame wins where EGTs supply perfect advice.
The details will emerge at the ICGA's Adv.Computer.Games(10) conference in Graz
this November.
g
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