Generating all 6-men EGDB (Chessmaster).

[Nordlandia]

As i use Chessmaster for nostalgic reasons and for capture some renders with cool chess sets. I don't see the need of using EGTBs with chessmaster. For most people it's obsolete but still okey GUI to use.

[jonathancolledge]

Wow, good effort. Agreed CM is still awesome. I am just doing the 5 man tablebases - looks like it'll complete in an hour or so making for a total of 13 or 14 hours. How long would the 6 man take based on that, do you reckon? It is only using 10% CPU, it doesn't do multithreaded?

Also, did you use a batch file to do them all in one go? Are you able to share it please?

Thanks,
Jonathan

[jonathancolledge]

Ok, in case it helps anyone, I took Juan's log files, unzipped with 7-zip so it preserves the date and time and got a list of all the files by time so I knew which he had generated first. I then put all the pawn ones at the end. This should solve any dependencies, I hope. The MAKEALL6.bat file is available here: https://github.com/jonathancolledge/MAKEALL6

Let me know if you think that'll work, or if I have missed anything.

I hope it is not just me and Juan using Chessmaster - you can update the engine using Chessbridge here: https://github.com/Xyrus2000/ChessBridge; you can update with your own database, and you can use Chessmaster with a DGT e-board with this: http://www.digitalgametechnology.com/in ... _ratio=1.5, which works with Chessbridge. So essentially, with these 6 man tablebases and a new database and engine, you can upgrade Chessmaster so that it is better than Fritz, etc.

[jshriver]

I love CM as well, in fact a few months ago I bought a copy of CM9k and CM10 and a usb DVD drive to read the media. Sadly I have not been able to get it to work in Windows 10, even when put into Win 7 mode and a myriad of suggestions I've found online. Apparently there is a patch to make it more stable in Window 10 but that assumes it was already installed in Win 7 and you upgraded to 10.

[jonathancolledge]

@jshriver - have you tried Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHESSMASTER- ... Sw1GJgdzLx

It works well on Windows 10. I'm not sure if the latest update is still downloadable from their servers, but if not I saved it from my temporary files (as it wouldn't install correctly unless as administrator), so I can send that if needed, it is only 82 Mb.

[tmokonen]

You can still download the English language patches for the Grandmaster edition:

http://patches.ubi.com/chessmaster_xi/c ... i_1.01.exe
http://patches.ubi.com/chessmaster_xi/c ... i_1.02.exe

[jkominek]

An obscure historical question for JVMerlino, who wrote the (engagingly written) FEG Readme text, if he is still checking this thread.

From section V. AN ENDGAME DATABASE FAQ ============

Q: What EGDBs have actually been built?
A: In the 1970's there was quite some reasearch on the topic. However, it
became interesting after Ken Thompson dedicated a machine for several
years to produce most of the interesting 5 piece EGDBs (DTC), and
eventually made them available on CD for free. In the early 90's Stiller
did some work on a massive parallel system on 6 pieces, but he couldn't
save the data. In the meanwhile Edwards redid the 5 pieces for DTM but
mainly for research, without compression. Nalimov redid them again, but
used compression (better than Thompson's, but still larger because of
DTM). Nalimov's have been widely used since 1999. This is all public
knowledge. Not public were the Koning & Kuijf experments, done since
1995. These experiments were targeted at building EGDBs fast, and
succeeded in being fast. Though the actual data is more or less the same
as Nalimov's.

Who was Kuijf, the Johan deKoning collaborator mentioned? That is a name I do not recognize. Searching computer chess discussion boards does not seem to lead to an answer, but I might not be looking in the right place.

I wonder how far the original poster has progressed in generating 7-men tables.

[Ajedrecista]

Hello John:

An obscure historical question for JVMerlino, who wrote the (engagingly written) FEG Readme text, if he is still checking this thread.

From section V. AN ENDGAME DATABASE FAQ ============

Q: What EGDBs have actually been built?
A: In the 1970's there was quite some reasearch on the topic. However, it
became interesting after Ken Thompson dedicated a machine for several
years to produce most of the interesting 5 piece EGDBs (DTC), and
eventually made them available on CD for free. In the early 90's Stiller
did some work on a massive parallel system on 6 pieces, but he couldn't
save the data. In the meanwhile Edwards redid the 5 pieces for DTM but
mainly for research, without compression. Nalimov redid them again, but
used compression (better than Thompson's, but still larger because of
DTM). Nalimov's have been widely used since 1999. This is all public
knowledge. Not public were the Koning & Kuijf experments, done since
1995. These experiments were targeted at building EGDBs fast, and
succeeded in being fast. Though the actual data is more or less the same
as Nalimov's.

Who was Kuijf, the Johan deKoning collaborator mentioned? That is a name I do not recognize. Searching computer chess discussion boards does not seem to lead to an answer, but I might not be looking in the right place.

I wonder how far the original poster has progressed in generating 7-men tables.

While John answers, I have found an article at Chess Programming Wiki that could be the man:

Hans Kuijf

[...] Already during the 80s, along with Nico Kuijf, Hans Kuijf developed the Chess databases NICBase and TascBase. Further, Hans Kuijf was involved in the Database programming of Chessmaster 6000 and 7000. He continued his work with Johan de Koning on the Clobber program Pan, [...]

So, there can be a doubt between Hans and Nico.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.