OpenChess

Just wondering...
Why does Stockfish not support tablebases? Hard to implement?

Nalimov doesn't fit with their open source licence, as one needs the permission of Nalimov (Probing Code) and Kadatch (Compressing Code) to be allowed using the code.

IIRC the team is however considering implementing the Gaviota Tablebases.

Paddington wrote:Just wondering...
Why does Stockfish not support tablebases? Hard to implement?

That depends on your definition of "implement". Implementing the ability to probe tablebases is easy. Finding a way to use them to actually improve strength is hard. We strongly dislike adding complexity to the program unless it increases the strength significantly. It's possible that support for Gaviota tablebases will be added somewhere down the road, but we're not yet sure.

We strongly dislike adding complexity to the program unless it increases the strength significantly.

That's reasonable. But one of the major uses of engines is analysis. In that case tablebases are very useful.

The added complexity seems quite minor.