Winboard Forum

Hi,

I've been googling out for information on how to add support for the Nalimov tablebases to my chess engine. It appears that the Nalimov 3-4-5-6 men tablebases are quite big (1.2 TB). So, I would prefer an online access.

I've come across a handful of webpages which provides an applet based lookup. However, I am looking for an online location which my chess engine can directly refer to. (i.e. the chess engine could connect to a specific port on the computer which hosts the EGTB, send queries and fetch the required info.). Is there some standardized protocols available to fetch information this way? If not, what are my other options?

[NB: I read somewhere that the Chess GUIs could do the Opening book and EGTB lookups. Are the books interfaced that way?
My thinking is that the engine is given an interface...]

Thanks,
Binesh Andrews

binesh wrote:Hi,

I've been googling out for information on how to add support for the Nalimov tablebases to my chess engine. It appears that the Nalimov 3-4-5-6 men tablebases are quite big (1.2 TB). So, I would prefer an online access.

I've come across a handful of webpages which provides an applet based lookup. However, I am looking for an online location which my chess engine can directly refer to. (i.e. the chess engine could connect to a specific port on the computer which hosts the EGTB, send queries and fetch the required info.). Is there some standardized protocols available to fetch information this way? If not, what are my other options?

[NB: I read somewhere that the Chess GUIs could do the Opening book and EGTB lookups. Are the books interfaced that way?
My thinking is that the engine is given an interface...]

Thanks,
Binesh Andrews

Hello Binesh Andrews,

Nalimov at some point s going to require writing and waiting for the coders of the tables to grant permission for their code to be used.

I would strongly advise that you have a look at the publicly available Gaviota tablebases.

They can be obtained and read about here:

http://sites.google.com/site/gaviotachessengine/Home/endgame-tablebases-1

I hope this helps.

Incidentally, the UCI protocol allows the gui to do the end game handling and opening book look up. Winboard engines handle that by themselves.

Someone more knowledgeable will correct me I am sure.

Later.

Thanks Roger. I'll do some research in that direction.

I just summed up the sizes of the files in the Gaviota repository. Seems like it is around 6.7 GB for 3-4-5 men. 6.7 gigs is reasonable but still big enough to have a copy. Maybe I can stick to this.

I would still keep my eyes open for an online access

binesh wrote:Thanks Roger. I'll do some research in that direction.

I just summed up the sizes of the files in the Gaviota repository. Seems like it is around 6.7 GB for 3-4-5 men. 6.7 gigs is reasonable but still big enough to have a copy. Maybe I can stick to this.

I would still keep my eyes open for an online access

online probing is fine for individual positions, but if you want to probe the tables during the search that is way too slow.