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Subject: Re: Any programs besides Yace and Patzer that can use bitbase files

Author: Fabien Letouzey

Date: 07:10:55 06/18/04

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On June 17, 2004 at 21:05:21, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On June 17, 2004 at 19:32:17, Dieter Buerssner wrote:

>>If anybody wants to implement "bitbases", and really doesn't want to do it more
>>or less with own ideas, the articles of Ernst Heinz show really everything
>>needed. After that, it should only be a programming exercize. The articles are
>>avialable at http://supertech.lcs.mit.edu/~heinz/node17.html

>>Especially interesting in this context:

>>Space-efficient indexing of chess endgame tables.
>>Knowledgeable encoding and querying of endgame databases.
>>Endgame databases and efficient index schemes.
>>Efficient interior-node recognition.

>Yes, I have those papers.

Do I correctly remember they don't address compression at all?  Uncompressed is
OK only for 4-man bases.

I suggest you read articles about other (converging) games.  Checkers/Draughts
of course, but also Awari and even Nine Men Morris (I can give you pointer if
you don't find them).  They usually use RLE/LZ/LZH to compress fixed-size
blocks.

More ambitious approaches to compression are knowledge-based; store only the
exceptions to some rules.  Apparently the author of KnightDreamer
(http://www3.tripnet.se/~owemelin/johan/KnightDreamer.html) has had some success
with machine learning (unfortunately also only private stuff).  Bear in mind he
had to provide the rules in the first place, of course.

>>But with knowledge of the basic ideas, who to use symmetry to index
>>TB-positions, many people will be able to come up with similar ideas, that
>>should also work well (and perhaps identically). It might be more fun.

>I sometimes wonder if there is a fundamentally better way to compress.  I have
>thought about a minimal perfect hash for every legal move on a sparse board.  We
>could encode it in a minimum number of bits, amounting to the number of possible
>total moves for a set (as reduced by reflections, rotations, etc).

>Of course, you would have to compute a new hash for each new set.

How does this relate to TBs, which are position-based?

Do you mean storing the best move for each position?  It can't be smaller than a
W/L/D result.

>The reason I brought it up was that I think it would be nice if there were a
>standard way to do it.  Imagine if every chess program author made his own
>tablebase files.  Sounds like a clever thing that would encourage innovation.
>That's on the one hand.  On the other hand, there would be 250+ redundant 7 gig
>file sets on my computer.  That would be a bit annoying.

I have plans but too long-term for your taste, I am afraid.  Dieter will be much
faster.  Eugene is also considering WLD bases I think.

Fabien.




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