Reinhard: .
.
.
Personally I think, that huge engame tablebases would not significantly decide the outcome of a game.

Of course! You are right. That's what i believe too.... But i'm speaking about 5-6 piece tablebases. But if it is proven that having tablebases makes no harm to the program's strength, then any positive influence due to tablebases is welcome....


Maybe 0.1% of all games could benefit.

Hmmmm at Chess i think this 0.001 is a small guess. It must be higher. But at Gothic Chess and CRC games i think it might be correct..... From the Chess games i've seen, i can roughly calculate that in 1 out of 120 games programs have a profit from endgame tablebases....


But to demonstrately use them is an indicator of panic.

I don't believe this is the reason! Ed Trice is obsessed with tablebases:-) Remember his huge work on the endgame tablebases for his Checkers program. Now that Checkers' interest is decreasing (the game is "close" enough to be solved- for example to determine the winner between 2 of the best today programs they needed 624 games and the score ended with 4 only wins and 620 draws!!!!!!!!!) Ed couldn't forget his obsession with tablebases and started to generate the Gothic Chess tablebases.... I believe that tablebases hide a brilliant mystery inside them (i'm always amazed when i see a perfect mate in 30,40 or more) but i believe that the time spent to them could be used more productively if it was used to improve the program's evaluation or search....


Contrary to that big opening books normaly have a huge influence on chess games.
Actually I have an idea, where the difference in SMIRF's playing strength concerning 8x8 and 10x8 could be caused.

Yes of course opening books is a whole different matter. Opening books help a program VERY VERY much to achieve good results.....



Walter Mantego You're wrong if you don't think that's amazing to have such a big difference.

It depends on how do you mean the amazing.....


Take those data bases away from those machines and get the program down to SMIRF's size. Which machine is going to win?

The endgame tablebases doesn't determine the strength difference at all! Period!!!!!!!!!
The opening book is a huge factor that influences the strength diefference by much!
The size of the EXEcutable of a (CRC) Chess program/engine doesn't matter! (Fritz 8 for example is 480 KB while Fritz 9 is 436 KB but Fritz 9 is way superior).

We have that Gothic Vortex is 7 MB (many of these MB are just unused) and that its opening book is another 7 MB and its tablebases are 10 GB. So if you believe that all these 10GB - 14MB of tablebases do make a difference then you ARE ABSOLUTELY WRONG!

Also why someone has to go down to Smirf size to compare against it? If someone has done all this work and if he has created for example a huuuuuuge opening book then why do we have to erase all these and test it without all these....?

If you speak about _pure_ engine strength without endgame tablebases(althouth these don't add to strength at all at 10x8 variants) and without opening books, then yes we have to test the engines without endgame tablebases and without opening books!
But if you speak about engine strength generally that means to compare 2 engines, then no we have to test the engines with endgame tablebases and with opening books and with whatever else their authors have thought about increasing their strength!


How do you know that's not the reason? I was just speculating as to why it doesn't seem to play blitz games well, but you say it as if you're an authority on it.

I know because i've observed its evaluations countless times and i have understood that it's one of these "slow searchers".....


This other program is not SMIRF, so why should it's weakness in blitz games have anything to do with SMIRF's? It the author's note telling you that SMIRF works in the identical manner?

I didn't say that it has anything to do with Smirf! I just gave it as an example that there are other engines that can't play good at blitz while they CAN play good at longer time controls....