The Chess Board

[MorningLightMountain]

Endgame Tablebases:

I'm in the process of downloading all of the 6 man Nalimov EGTBs, which takes about 1.2TB of storage!!!! (for comparison, the 5 man tablebases take only about 7GB)

I have about 75% of the 6-man EGTBs so far.....once I have them all, my chess engines will have perfect play when there are 6 or less pieces left (counting the kings). Note that the tablebases don't include 5 vs 1, since that is a trivial win against the lone king.

Also of note is that Chess being "a solved game" would imply having 32 piece tablebases, a feat that seems almost impossible (since the storage needs would probably exceed the particle count of the observable universe!!!!)

More info here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase

below is a link that will instantly solve any 6 man endgame, for those who might not wish to spend 2 weeks downloading 1.2 TB of files!!!!

http://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html/

PS: for fun, try entering the below FEN string to see a Mate in 253 moves (ignoring the 50 move rule), with a pawn under-promotion to a knight!!! (copy and past the below into the "input FEN" button)

8/1P1k4/2R5/n7/1n6/K7/8/8 w - - 0 1