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Subject: Re: 7 men tablebase

Author: Kolss

Date: 08:52:47 04/13/05

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On April 13, 2005 at 09:27:48, William Penn wrote:

>On April 13, 2005 at 01:10:27, Andrew Walker wrote:
>
>>I'm not sure if the calculations were done recently or not, however there's a
>>nice
>>piece on the 4 knights vs queen tablebase computed by Marc Bourzutschky at
>>http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/diary.htm, including a white to mate in 85
>>moves and a mutual zugwang. Nice!
>>
>>Andrew
>
>It seems to me that until FIDE changes the laws of chess to allow endings longer
>than 50 moves, it is pointless to extend the tablebases further. Even some of
>the 4-5-6-men tablebases don't apply to a real game. If it takes more than 50
>moves without a capture or pawn move, then it's a draw according to FIDE.
>WP

Hi,

I would rather say that the tablebases would need to be adjusted to the FIDE
rules. If a program happens to reach a BB vs. N endgame with a mate in 77, but
it is not possible to capture the knight within 50 moves, this position should
have been scored as a draw. As far as I know, Dieter Buerssner (Yace) has
generated such tablebases which comply with the official rules of the chess
game. With those, I see no problem (in principle) in continuing to 6-, 7-,
...-man tablebases.
IMHO, endgames like RR vs. RN are not very interesting from a practical
viewpoint; they are (usually) drawn, and a good chess program should be able to
draw them without tablebases against anyone and anything within the
50-moves-rule. Of course, a sequence of moves leading to a piece capture after
183 moves and a checkmate after 257 may be interesting from a purely academic
perspective...

Best regards - Munjong.


P.S.: If I am well informed, all 4-man TB contain correct information with
respect to FIDE rules, only starting from 5-man TB onwards, they are no longer
"accurate".



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