Endgame tablebase was one of the Sports and recreation good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 24, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed May 5, 2007 Featured article candidate Not promoted May 9, 2007 Good article nominee Listed August 24, 2007 WikiProject A-class review Not approved June 17, 2009 Good article reassessment Listed January 8, 2024 Good article reassessment Delisted Current status: Delisted good article

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In context, the following paragraph seems to have an error:

"In 1970, Thomas Ströhlein published a doctoral thesis[11][12] with analysis of the following classes of endgame: KQK, KRK, KPK, KQKR, KRKB, and KRKN.[13] In 1977 Thompson's KQKR database was used in a match versus Grandmaster Walter Browne."

There is a contradiction between that statement from the introduction,

"Tablebases are generated by retrograde analysis, working backward from a checkmated position."

and "Step 1: Generating all possible positions" which considers positions that are obviously not checkmated positions (which require the enemy K to be on the border). So I wonder which one is right. I do think that retrograde analysis should be the way to go. Then, for many standard "mates" [K+Q, K+R, ...], one can restrict the search to the case where the opponent king is on the border -- i.e., only 4, not 10 squares, and clearly much less positions of the mating material: one of the pieces must threaten the king; and if it is next to it, it must be protected by the own king or another piece. — MFH:Talk 21:56, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree that the searching principle(s) may be somewhat unclear in the article, I do not immediately agree that the ending positions can really be restricted to checkmated positions. A complete retrograde search would need to include stalemate positions, but also... any position that can be a repetition of an earlier position.Elias (talk) 14:43, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ÑÑ The most basic utility of endgame tablebases doesn't seem to be treated anywhere. If some piece is a statistical traitor, wouldn't that be something that human players should try to figure out? - Joshua Clement Broyles ÑÑ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.28.50.13 (talk) 17:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"The best calculation of symmetry is achieved by limiting one pawn to 24 squares in the rectangle a2-a7-d7-d2. All other pieces and pawns may be located in any of the 64 squares with respect to the pawn. Thus, an endgame with pawns has a complexity of 24/10 = 2.4 times a pawnless endgame with the same number of pieces."

The rectangle spanned by a2,a7,d7,d2 contains 48 squares. Which 24 squares are to be considered for each pawn? And why? And how does this translate to a "complexity" of 2.4 times that of a pawnless endgame with the same number of pieces? (Not including pawns?)

Also, I would think that the obvious way to handle multiple pawns would be to require that the squares they occupy are selected according to a predetermined order of all the valid squares (e.g. according to the sorting key: 8 * row + column), such that after the k-th pawn is placed, the (k+1)-th pawn must be placed on a square that has a larger numerical sorting key. Elias (talk) 11:58, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

DTZ metric is more popular than DTC and DTM and should be mentioned in bold. Can anyone think of a simple position in which the difference between all 3 metrics is highlighted? Jack234567 (talk) 07:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've added some information about DTZ but we still need a better diagram. Jack234567 (talk) 04:08, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]