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Subject: Re: KQ vs kr position

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 16:27:18 08/03/99

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On August 03, 1999 at 19:09:29, KarinsDad wrote:

>On August 03, 1999 at 18:45:49, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>
>[snip]
>>
>>Yes, this is workable, but how could it be better? There can be a lot of leaf
>>nodes that could hit the EGTB and the extra time spent taking care of the 50
>>move rule could be better spent some where else. Some of the EGTB hits will
>>return mate in over 50. The program has to go further down the line to make sure
>>a pawn move or capture takes place before 50 moves are played. For example: mate
>>in 110 will require the program to find more than one pawn move or capture. Why
>>bother when you don't have to?
>
>If you are in a mate in 110 situation (probably extremely rare), it would
>probably behoove you to do your own searching for capture/push moves that lead
>to positions that maintain the win since you will probably find them relatively
>close to the main line anyway. Compared to searching even something as simple as
>an 8 ply alpha-beta, searching for those moves would take VERY little time. The
>reason this works out so well is that you do not have to search outside the
>tablebase once you are in it (or once you are close enough to it to force your
>way into it).

In many pawnless EGs a "good" capture can be hard to come by. 8 ply would not do
it in that case.

>
>From what I have been told, 5 piece tablebases take about a month to generate on
>a 500 Mhz system (more or less). In order to regenerate the work done so far on
>6 piece tablebases would be a great deal of work.
>
>Yes, you could improve upon the tablebases by doing what you suggest, however, I
>would expect that it would significantly increase the time required to generate
>the table, possibly by a factor of x2 or more. I realize that this would not be
>a great amount of time for 3, 4, and 5 piece tablebases, but for those people
>currently generating 6 piece tablebases, it's probably a significant amount of
>time (even if they were to find a way to keep the data they already have and
>just add to it).

I'm not sure if it would take longer, but if so, I can understand the trade off
of allowing draws in winning positions, since they are extremely rare. This is a
good point you make.

>
>So, all in all, it seems that you could improve upon them, but there probably
>isn't a need when it can be handled in real time within the program for those
>few instances when it would be needed. JMO.
>
>KarinsDad :)



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