Author: Tord Romstad
Date: 04:52:35 11/21/05
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On November 21, 2005 at 04:28:47, Martin Baumung wrote: >Hello Uri, > >>How much time does your program need to find Kxb3 that is the only practical >>chance to save the game > >please enlighten us on how the game can be saved after Kxb3 - especially when >using the EGTBs. Uri did not claim that Kxb3 was a draw, only that it was the best *practical chance* to win the game. Big difference. After Kxb3, white has to find a very hard move in order to win. Many opponents will not be able to find the right move (I almost certainly wouldn't). After all other moves than Kxb3, the win is trivial. Even I would be able to win. Another, less easily noticable problem of EGTBs is the general slowdown of the program. It is very hard to guess how many wins a program misses because it wastes too much time probing tablebases when a slightly deeper search would have found an easy win. It is just not possible to prove the usefulness of EGTBs in practical play with a handful of positions. The only way to measure the usefulness is to play a big number of games with and without EGTBs and compare the results. So far, the overwhelming evidence points toward the conclusion that EGTB use is utterly insignificant in practical play (consider, for instance, the difference of 2 Elo points between Fruit 2.2 and Fruit 2.2.1 on the CEGT list). I am not a non-believer in EGTBs, by the way (in fact, I doubt that such "non-believers" really exist). The existence of 5-piece and 6-piece EGTBs is a tremendous contribution to the body of chess knowledge, and arguably one of the most exciting advances in chess theory over the last few decades. I am just very disappointed by the immense lack of imagination current chess programmers (myself included) display when trying to use this new body of knowledge. Tord
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