Syzygy tablebases

Adds support for Syzygy tablebases to Stockfish.  See
the Readme for information on using the tablebases.

Tablebase support can be enabled/disabled at the Makefile
level as well, by setting syzygy=yes or syzygy=no.

Big/little endian are both supported.

No functional change (if Tablebases are not used).

Resolves #6
This commit is contained in:
Ronald de Man
2014-11-26 07:45:28 +08:00
committed by Gary Linscott
parent 4509eb1342
commit 7caa6cd338
12 changed files with 2837 additions and 6 deletions
+54
View File
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ to one search thread, so it is therefore recommended to inspect the value of
the *Threads* UCI parameter, and to make sure it equals the number of CPU
cores on your computer.
This version of Stockfish has support for Syzygybases.
### Files
@@ -25,6 +27,58 @@ This distribution of Stockfish consists of the following files:
that can be used to compile Stockfish on Unix-like systems.
### Syzygybases
**Configuration**
Syzygybases are configured using the UCI options "SyzygyPath",
"SyzygyProbeDepth", "Syzygy50MoveRule" and "SyzygyProbeLimit".
The option "SyzygyPath" should be set to the directory or directories that
contain the .rtbw and .rtbz files. Multiple directories should be
separated by ";" on Windows and by ":" on Unix-based operating systems.
**Do not use spaces around the ";" or ":".**
Example: `C:\tablebases\wdl345;C:\tablebases\wdl6;D:\tablebases\dtz345;D:\tablebases\dtz6`
It is recommended to store .rtbw files on an SSD. There is no loss in
storing the .rtbz files on a regular HD.
Increasing the "SyzygyProbeDepth" option lets the engine probe less
aggressively. Set this option to a higher value if you experience too much
slowdown (in terms of nps) due to TB probing.
Set the "Syzygy50MoveRule" option to false if you want tablebase positions
that are drawn by the 50-move rule to count as win or loss. This may be useful
for correspondence games (because of tablebase adjudication).
The "SyzygyProbeLimit" option should normally be left at its default value.
**What to expect**
If the engine is searching a position that is not in the tablebases (e.g.
a position with 7 pieces), it will access the tablebases during the search.
If the engine reports a very large score (typically 123.xx), this means
that it has found a winning line into a tablebase position.
If the engine is given a position to search that is in the tablebases, it
will use the tablebases at the beginning of the search to preselect all
good moves, i.e. all moves that preserve the win or preserve the draw while
taking into account the 50-move rule.
It will then perform a search only on those moves. **The engine will not move
immediately**, unless there is only a single good move. **The engine likely
will not report a mate score even if the position is known to be won.**
It is therefore clear that behaviour is not identical to what one might
be used to with Nalimov tablebases. There are technical reasons for this
difference, the main technical reason being that Nalimov tablebases use the
DTM metric (distance-to-mate), while Syzygybases use a variation of the
DTZ metric (distance-to-zero, zero meaning any move that resets the 50-move
counter). This special metric is one of the reasons that Syzygybases are
more compact than Nalimov tablebases, while still storing all information
needed for optimal play and in addition being able to take into account
the 50-move rule.
### Compiling it yourself
On Unix-like systems, it should be possible to compile Stockfish