Solving Large Retrograde Analysis Problems Using a Network of Workstations
Robert W. Lake, Jonathan Schaeffer, Paul Lu · 1993
Chess endgame databases, while of important theoretical interest, have yet to make a significant impact in tournament chess. In the game of checkers, however, endgame databases have played a pivotal role in the success of our World Championship challenger program Chinook. Consequently, we are interested in building databases consisting of hundreds of billions of positions. Since database positions arise frequently in Chinook's search trees, the databases must be accessible in real-time, unlike in chess. This paper discusses techniques for building large endgame databases using a network of workstations, and how this data can be organized for use in a real-time search. Although checkers is used to illustrate many of the ideas, the techniques and tools developed are also applicable to chess. 1. Introduction In computer chess, the impact of precomputed endgame databases on tournament play has been relatively small. There are primarily three reasons for this. First, the variety of chess p...