5

The Nalimov/Syzygy, etc tablebases are, as far as I know, computer databases that store all the possible possitions in the board, with the best moves and the outcome of the game, assumming both players work perfectly.

Is there still work on them? I think all the positions of 7 or less pieces are solved by now, but I don't know if there are computers out there at the moment, calculating positions and adding them to these databases.

Carabes
  • 225
  • 1
  • 4
  • To my knowledge no such undertaking is going on right now. One of the main problems apart from the massive amount of CPU time that would be necessary, is that for generating 8 men tablebases you'd probably need at least 64 TB or RAM. – koedem Apr 29 '23 at 16:01

1 Answers1

9

Certainly there is work on 8-man tablebases.

One source of information on this is from the Chess Endgame Study Association here This article describes pawnless ending work.

It is simpler to start with pawnless endings as there are fewer possible positions to evaluate. And evaluating all endings with pawns depends on evaluating the pawnless ending that occur after promotion.

Chessbase has this article that re-evaluates some known positions using this research.

Michael West
  • 5,196
  • 14
  • 18