Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 12:39:02 04/14/99
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You make an interesting point. If we can discover an algorithm, we can compress the tablebase files down to zero. For instance, in your cited KRK example, if the king moves towards any nearest edge, move rook forward to restrict by one more rank or file. Else, slide king along protected row/file until enemy king mirrors on the opposite side (or moves back) at that time, restrict by another rank/file by moving rook. There are (of course) a few simple complications like when the enemy king gets close to the rook, etc. But the point it that we can replace a database by an algorithm for any given special case "once we know how it works." So, we could produce similar algorithms for KBBK, KBNK because we already know how those work. Perhaps we can discover patterns in more and more complicated endings and encode those also. Really, we're just talking about capturing rules. It does not seem unreasonable that a computer or human might study an endgame database and discover rules/patterns that lead to mates and encode those.
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