What is the best way to obtain the 7-piece tablebases?

[nnnnnnnn]

I am looking for a practical method to obtain 7-piece win-draw-loss tables. (I do not need depth to win tables).

I realize that there are some sites that offer downloads, but I am unclear on how one is supposed to download hundreds of files totaling about 6 terabytes in practice. I am on a home internet connection, the download would take a month and probably annoy my ISP. I also would need some kind of reliable software for pausing and resuming downloads and for just managing such a long job. This is on a Mac by the way. I did not see anyone selling the tables on portable drives which might be faster if it existed; nor could I find cloud rental access to them (I would need a shell).

For the hardware I plan to use a Promise 16 TB hard drive RAID. I could not find SSD drives for Mac at that size available, and if they are, they are very expensive.

[cdani]

An opportunity for a commercial transaction? With money in the table sure someone will send you a hard disk with the tablebases in it (not me).

[yurikvelo]

(I do not need depth to win tables).

6 terabytes in practice.

Syzygy author at this forum told many times: RTBW files do not work correctly without RTBZ files

RTBW: 8.5 TiB
RDTBZ: 8.3 TiB
----------------
Total: 16.7 TiB

[braindied]

I am looking for a practical method to obtain 7-piece win-draw-loss tables. (I do not need depth to win tables).

I realize that there are some sites that offer downloads, but I am unclear on how one is supposed to download hundreds of files totaling about 6 terabytes in practice. I am on a home internet connection, the download would take a month and probably annoy my ISP. I also would need some kind of reliable software for pausing and resuming downloads and for just managing such a long job. This is on a Mac by the way. I did not see anyone selling the tables on portable drives which might be faster if it existed; nor could I find cloud rental access to them (I would need a shell).

For the hardware I plan to use a Promise 16 TB hard drive RAID. I could not find SSD drives for Mac at that size available, and if they are, they are very expensive.

You can get "cloud" access to 7man tables via the commercial Aquarium software (but on windows not mac) or, in the past, a direct key purchase via ChessOk website.

[Ovyron]

But one can get cloud access for free with the Lomonosov mobile application. Does paying offer downloading of the files?

[nnnnnnnn]

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

@yurikvelo Thank you for the correct sizes. That is helpful. Regarding RTBZ: I think the author might have stated that the RTBZ files are necessary for playing, but for my purposes I need the win-loss-draw tables only. Indeed I would assume that even generic engines can use web interfaces for the RTBZ information, so I am not sure that a local copy of the RTBZ is still necessary.

By the way even with just an 8.5 TB database I do not know the size of the RAID I should purchase. I am not a RAID expert.

@braindied and @Ovyron The Aquarium and Lomonosov options you mention are indeed useful, but they do not provide a shell (really a Unix shell) for programmatic access.

[Dann Corbit]

If your are going to try to use a cloud to play chess using the 7 man files, I predict tears.
Or maybe you have 100 GB/sec internet so it doesn't matter.

[phhnguyen]

You may download them from the FTP server of Bojun Guo (who created all 7 men endgames) at ftp://ftp.chessdb.cn/pub/syzygy. FTP is typically fast and reliable for downloading. On macOS, I use FileZilla (free download from AppStore) as an FTP client. You may select and download some (from 1 to 20) high-frequently-use endgames first as the below list (sorted by their importance). They may be more than enough for typical needs.

1) KRPPvKRP 2) KBPPvKBP 3) KPPPvKPP 4) KRPPPvKR 5) KQPPvKQP 6) KNPPvKNP 7) KNPPvKBP 8) KRBPvKRP 9) KQPPvKPP 10) KQPPPvKP 11) KBPPvKNP 12) KRPPvKRB 13) KRPPvKPP 14) KBPPvKRP 15) KRNPvKRP 16) KRBPPvKR 17) KBPPvKPP 18) KRPPPvKP 19) KRBPvKRB 20) KRPPvKRN

Links:
FTP: ftp://ftp.chessdb.cn/pub/syzygy
CPW: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Syzygy_Bases
Online query by Bojun Guo: https://www.chessdb.cn/queryc_en/

[Ovyron]

If your are going to try to use a cloud to play chess using the 7 man files, I predict tears.
Or maybe you have 100 GB/sec internet so it doesn't matter.

Even with a 100GB/sec internet, the chunks would be enormous, causing huge latency. So still tears.

[Andrew]

You may download them from the FTP server of Bojun Guo (who created all 7 men endgames) at ftp://ftp.chessdb.cn/pub/syzygy. FTP is typically fast and reliable for downloading. On macOS, I use FileZilla (free download from AppStore) as an FTP client. You may select and download some (from 1 to 20) high-frequently-use endgames first as the below list (sorted by their importance). They may be more than enough for typical needs.

1) KRPPvKRP 2) KBPPvKBP 3) KPPPvKPP 4) KRPPPvKR 5) KQPPvKQP 6) KNPPvKNP 7) KNPPvKBP 8) KRBPvKRP 9) KQPPvKPP 10) KQPPPvKP 11) KBPPvKNP 12) KRPPvKRB 13) KRPPvKPP 14) KBPPvKRP 15) KRNPvKRP 16) KRBPPvKR 17) KBPPvKPP 18) KRPPPvKP 19) KRBPvKRB 20) KRPPvKRN

Links:
FTP: ftp://ftp.chessdb.cn/pub/syzygy
CPW: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Syzygy_Bases
Online query by Bojun Guo: https://www.chessdb.cn/queryc_en/

Interesting, what size does that set take up?

Andrew

PS ftp (and telnet!) really bring back memories of my uni days! Was great for downloading shareware etc for the Amiga (and later PC)