Free access to a large collection of six-man tablebases is now available
keywords: tablebases, six, piece, man, 6, free, Nalimov, chessplanet
Robert Pawlak
Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Tablebases are commonly available from a variety of sources. Indeed, Convekta has a set of five man (including some six-man sets) available on CD and DVD. But getting a complete archive of 6-man tablebase on your own machine can be difficult. So far, Eugene Nalimov has generated over 600GB of tablebase files already, and Convekta expects twice that total will be generated before the set is complete. So getting 6-man tablebases on your own computer is a big problem. Luckily, Convekta has made these files available over the internet.

As far as I know, no other commercial entity has done this for the 6-man set. However, as of today, Convekta is making this data available through their new Russian playing zone: ChessPlanet.ru. Note that the zone is not fully functional yet and  is not optimized for English speaking people. However, a wide variety of features are working already. You can access the tablebases through the playing zone as follows:

Download the ChessPlanet client and set it up: http://www.chessplanet.ru/program/chessplanet_e.exe.

1. Run the client (ChessPlanet.exe) and log on to the server. Registration is free and instant. You may also use a guest login.
2. After logging in, click on the database button, then click the "New" button.
3. Click on the "Position" button.
4. Clear the board using the right-click context menu. Setup a 3-4-5-6 man position using the setup dialog. (Kings are counted as pieces.) Press Ok when finished.
5. Press the small button just to the right of the "Engine" button. This will give you the option of seeing a variation or position evaluation.

In the future, you will be able to import EPD positions from clipboard (Shift-Ins will paste the position into the board). Try these for example:

8/pk6/8/8/8/8/N7/N6K w - -

8/1k6/8/8/8/8/N7/N6K w - -

You cannot mate with two knights and kings. But if your opponent has a pawn, checkmate is possible.

 

 

 

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