Author: Peter Karrer
Date: 17:31:31 09/25/99
tbquery can be downloaded from http://www2.active.ch/~pkarrer/tbquery.zip .
It is a little program to query the Nalimov tablebases. It supports the new
6-man tablebases, e.g. KQQKQQ. It can work as a web server, that is people will
be able to query these EGTBs over the web, *if* someone is willing to set up a
semi-permanent home for it.
"Semi-permanent" meaning for the duration of the Kasparov-World match (days,
weeks, months?). KQQKQQ could be of some importance in this game.
Here's the readme file:
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tbquery is a tool to query the Nalimov endgame tablebases (EGTBs) (which
you can download from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/TB). It supports the
new 6-man tablebases (e.g. KQQKQQ).
tbquery can be used either standalone (against EGTB files which you have
downloaded), or as a primitive specialized web server.
tbquery is strictly "no-frills"; the only luxury is the wildcard lookup
feature (see examples below).
When used standalone, you start tbquery with a chess position as command
line parameter, for instance:
tbquery Ka1 Nb1 Nc1 kh8 ph7 w
Output will look like this:
White Ka1 Nb1 Nc1, Black Kh8 h7; white to move: mate in 97.
White pieces are denoted by uppercase letters, black pieces by lowercase
ones ('P' or 'p' for pawns is mandatory). The side to move is specified
with 'w' or 'b' (default is white). Specification of en-passant possibilities
and castling rights is not supported. tbquery will output only the result
(mate in x, draw, or mated in x) but not the winning or drawing moves.
Other examples:
tbquery w Ka1,Qb1,Qc1,qf8,qg8,kh8
tbquery b Ka1 Qb1 Qc1 qf8 q? kh8
tbquery F 7k/8/8/8/8/8/8/KR6 b
You can use delimiters (commas in the first example) if you like. In the
second example, the '?' wildcard is used. This means that tbquery will
evaluate all possible legal positions of that piece. The third example
shows input in FEN notation; if the line starts with 'F' (or 'FEN'), tbquery
will assume FEN format.
If started with "tbquery S", the program will become a simple web server
specialized on serving tablebase lookups. People will then be able to query
your EGTBs via a web browser over the Internet. For instance
http://<yourhost>:31416/Ka1,Nb1,Nc1,kh8,ph7,w or
http://<yourhost>:31416/b Ka1 Qb1 Qc1 qf8 q? kh8 or
http://<yourhost>:31416/FEN 7k/8/8/8/8/8/8/KR6 b .
You can specify three environment variables to parametrize tbquery:
TB_PATH: The direcories (';'-separated on Windows, ':'-separated on Unix)
where tbquery should look for EGTB files. For instance "c:\crafty\TB;d:\TB".
TB_SERVERPORT: The TCP port where tbquery (in server mode) should listen for
incoming requests; default is 31416.
TB_CACHESIZE: Size of tbquery's internal tablebase cache in megabytes;
default 8 (probably not very important).
tbquery might compile under Unix; I tried to write platform-independent code.
tbquery is public domain. The author encourages other people to enhance the
software. He does not seek control over eventual modifications.
Peter Karrer (pkarrer@active.ch) 9/26/1999.
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