| Tablebases are handy, but the required hard drive space makes them generally not worth the trouble, especially since they are available online from Shredder and ChessOK. When I set up SCID, ages ago, I downloaded the 3- and 4-man tablebases on my hard drive. The total size is less than 30 MB. The 5-man tablebases weigh in at more than 7 GB -- far too cumbersome for non-professionals. So I decided to install only the most important 5-man tablebases, particularly rook & pawn against rook. The image to the right lists the tablebases for what I consider the most important/useful 5-man endgames (i.e., 3 pieces besides the 2 kings):
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The above tablebase files total only 383 MB. To find the source files, look HERE and scroll down to the "3-4-5 men bases" heading. After setting up the entire 3- and 4-man directories, ou will have to locate and download the particular 5-man ".emd" files above. Then you will have to point SCID to the directories where they are saved. Before asking questions in the comments, please click/enlarge the screenshot images as I think these will clarify how this is supposed to work. For example, if you experience errors, save the tablebase folders directly in the "C:/" drive as shown in the pictures (a long path or spaces in the path can cause problems).
This setup makes it a breeze to study theoretical endgames, for example, by transcribing Jesus de Villa's 100 Endgames You Must Know into a PGN file for further research and practice. You can still resort to online tablebases to review an endgame beyond the parameters of the tablebases shown above.
This setup makes it a breeze to study theoretical endgames, for example, by transcribing Jesus de Villa's 100 Endgames You Must Know into a PGN file for further research and practice. You can still resort to online tablebases to review an endgame beyond the parameters of the tablebases shown above.
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