Computerized databases mapping perfect play for 7 or fewer remaining units.
Why it matters
For positions with seven pieces or fewer, chess is solved. A tablebase does not evaluate: it knows the result with perfect play, and how many moves it takes, for every legal position.
What that has taught us is humbling. Some endgames are wins that take more than two hundred moves and no human plan explains them, and some positions everybody assumed were drawn are not. It is also why endgame study now means learning the patterns that a person can actually use.
See it on a board
A tablebase would call this mate in one. The same table, on positions with a few more pieces, gives forced wins over two hundred moves long that no human plan describes.
Checked: this line ends in checkmate.
How to play it
- Use tablebases to check endgames after the game, not to memorise long winning sequences.
- Look up the boundary cases — which pawns draw against a queen, which rook endgames hold — because those are what you can carry into a game.
- Remember the fifty-move rule. Some tablebase wins are not winnable under it, and that is part of the practical answer.
At each level
The same idea, said the way it is taught at each age.
Queen · ages 8–11
Check your endgames against a tablebase after the game. It tells you not just the result but the exact move where it changed.
King · ages 10 and up
Use them for boundaries rather than sequences: which structures hold, which pawn draws against a queen. Memorising a two-hundred-move win teaches nothing you can use.
What goes wrong
- Treating a tablebase result as a plan. Knowing it is a win does not tell you how to play it under a clock.
- Forgetting the fifty-move rule, which turns some theoretical wins into draws over the board.
Questions people ask
- How many pieces do tablebases cover?
- Seven, including both kings. Eight-piece tables are being built, but the storage grows so fast that they are not generally available.