10 piece endgame databases

[MichelG]

After a discussion with Bert, i decided to do a bit of work on the endgame databases again. I increased the generation speed manyfold, and also generated a partial 5 man vs 5 man endgame database. (win/draw/lose only, international draughts)

First i generated the full 1-8 piece endings (120 hours) and then did 5 man vs 4 man partial (about half a day) and then 5 vs 5 partial (about 1 day). On on a 64 GB, 24 core, intel 13900.

5v4 is resolved 48.6% for non-capture positions, and 5v5 solves only 18.9%.

Details and some sample positions at:
https://www.mdgsoftware.nl/draughts/sta ... -5040.html and
https://www.mdgsoftware.nl/draughts/sta ... -5050.html

I am still working on increasing the percentage of solved positions; that involves computing some of the sub-databases like 4+1 vs 3+1 first, but i suspect the effect will be limited.

Unfortunately the files are too huge to distribute (171 GB for 5v5) and they definitely will not improve program strength. I just generated them for fun.

[BertTuyt]

Michel, nice work!
My next question would be, could a neural network encode this information (example 5x5), with 99% accuracy?
Or sufficient accuracy to win complicated endgames, or to draw endgames where you have an enormous problem.

Bert

[MichelG]

Michel, nice work!
My next question would be, could a neural network encode this information (example 5x5), with 99% accuracy?
Or sufficient accuracy to win complicated endgames, or to draw endgames where you have an enormous problem.

Bert

I don't think so. For these endgames, i think many wins/loses hinge on edge cases and precise configurations. For a neural net to work well, it needs to figure out the regularities.

Think of the NN's as an analog compression algorithm.

Just for fun: this function would be highly accurate:

int score5v5quiet(position)
{
return DRAW;
}

The neural net in Dragon that for endgames without database available, does not even try to predict the win/draw/lose outcome, even though is trained on the endgame database. It just outputs a score rather than w/d/l percentages. I tried both mechanisms, and the score version works better.