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Subject: Re: Neverending story with incomplete tablebases

Author: Harald Faber

Date: 07:43:46 08/10/03

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On August 10, 2003 at 08:45:35, Peter Berger wrote:

>On August 09, 2003 at 19:11:16, Harald Faber wrote:
>
>>On August 09, 2003 at 05:55:43, Tony Hedlund wrote:
>>
>>>How can J8 allow game 14 to end as a draw?
>>
>>
>>This is no serious question, isn't it?
>>It has been posted and mentioned approx. 1,000,000 times. It is the problem of
>>incomplete tablebases. AFAIK you/SSDF uses the "Fritz Endgame Turbo". Based on
>>the Chessbase marketing it consists of 4 CD-roms with "the most important
>>endgame tablebases". Based on what you saw in this game, what many many others -
>>include me - have seen in similar positions, it is crap.
>
>I don't want to join the war :), just want to add a similar problem that could
>be an issue with Chess Tiger, even when using a complete set.
>
>Chess Tiger has a unique way of announcing mates by not counting the mating move
>in mate announcements. At least when using the Fritz aka ChessBase interface a
>move taking material and entering a 5 piece ending won't look attractive as
>doing it one move later can look more attractive for the engine.
>
>An example:
>[D]8/5k2/3K4/6p1/4R3/2q2P2/8/8 b - - 0 1
>
>Here Tiger prefers Qa3+ or Qd3+ over Qxf3, because it believes Qxf3 is a
>miserable mate in 16 when Qa3 or Qd3 are mate in 15, counting the Tiger way. I
>couldn't check with Chess Tiger 15 for CB as I don't own it. I am not sure if
>this could lead to a similar problem as with missing tablebases, but it is
>possible.


It could be. ;-)
I checked it here with a fresh Tiger installation:
00:00:00.0	 Mate in 16	7	4549	Qxf3 Re7+ Kf6 Re6+ Kf5
00:00:00.0	 Mate in 15	7	6004	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:00.0	 Mate in 15	8	15849	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:00.0	 Mate in 15	9	44019	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:00.2	 Mate in 15	10	128162	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:00.6	 Mate in 15	11	376917	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:01.5	 Mate in 15	12	1005614	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:05.7	 Mate in 15	13	3440978	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4
00:00:33.6	 Mate in 15	14	10320979	Qd3+ Ke5 Qxf3 Rg4


>It is a well-known problem that users often won't use complete sets of
>tablebases and one easy to work around. I don't understand why this is not done
>for the commercial engines.
>
>Peter


I don't undestand so many more things in this issue as you can see in the whole
thread... ;-)



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