Martin Bryant

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Martin Bryant [1] Martin Bryant,

a British computer scientist, and computer chess and games programmer. In the late 70s, while affiliated with the University of Manchester and after some first chess programming trials, he got reawakened when he discovered a chess program listing on the university mainframe, a CDC Cyber 72, apparently the version of Chess 3.5 which won the ACM 1971 [2]. Inspired by that listing as well as Monty Newborn’s book Computer Chess [3], Martin wrote his own chess program in Pascal, dubbed White Knight. After graduating, he started to port White Knight to 6502 Assembly for an Apple II. He played the European MCC 1981 and soon became a professional chess and games programmer, also working for David Levy and Kevin O’Connell and their respective companies Philidor Software and Intelligent Software. In 1983, White Knight was bought by BBC for the BBC Micro [4] [5], and Martin soon started with his mighty Colossus brand programs Colossus Chess, Colossus Draughts and Colossus Backgammon.

Colossus Chess UCI#

In 2004, Martin Bryant started to work on a completely new version of Colossus Chess conforming to the UCI protocol [10] .

Photos#

Martin Bryant [11]

Publications#

• Tony Harrington (1983). University Challenge - Martin Bryant and White Knight. Personal Computer World, August 1983, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
• Alex Bell (1983). Chess for three gives the White Knight a winning gambit. The Micro User Magazine, December 1983
• Martin Bryant (1984). Chess software for home computers. Computer & Video Games, January 1984, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
• Tony Harrington (1984). Of might and men. Personal Computer News, November 1984, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
• Jonathan Schaeffer, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Martin Bryant (1996). Chinook: The World Man-Machine Checkers Champion. AI Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 1

Forum Posts#

2002 …#

• Interview with Martin Bryant, the Man behind Colossus by Fernando Villegas, CCC, May 18, 2002
• isn’t there a new version of colossus ? by Thorsten Czub, CCC, April 29, 2004
• Colossus 2007d Available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 22, 2007
• 64-bit PGO problem? by Martin Bryant, CCC, June 27, 2008
• Correlation Experiment Results by Martin Bryant, CCC, August 13, 2008
• Colossus 2008a available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 07, 2008
• Colossus 2008b available by Martin Bryant, CCC, September 23, 2008

2010 …#

• World Micro Computer Chess Championship 1984 photos by Martin Bryant, CCC, November 28, 2013 » WMCCC 1984
• Trying to find a weird mate in 1… by Martin Bryant, CCC, July 22, 2019 » Fieberg’s mate-in-1
• You gotta love Perft… just not too much! by Martin Bryant, CCC, July 27, 2019 » Perft

2020 …#

• PERFT transposition table funny?! by Martin Bryant, CCC, April 10, 2021 » Transposition Table, Memory
• On reaching maximum ply by Martin Bryant, CCC, April 29, 2021 » Maximum Search Depth, Ply, Search

External Links#

• Colossus Home, Wayback Machine

Colossus - Author

• Martin Bryant’s ICGA Tournaments
• Martin Bryant from Wikipedia
• Chess Computers - The UK Story from Chess Computer UK by Mike Watters
• Interview with David Levy from schach-computer wiki

References#

1. ↑ Colossus - Author, Wayback Machine
2. ↑ Tony Harrington (1983). University Challenge - Martin Bryant and White Knight. Personal Computer World, August 1983, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
3. ↑ Monroe Newborn (1975). Computer Chess. Academic Press
4. ↑ Alex Bell (1983). Chess for three gives the White Knight a winning gambit. The Micro User Magazine, December 1983
5. ↑ Chess Computers - The UK Story from Chess Computer UK by Mike Watters
6. ↑ Jonathan Schaeffer (1997). One Jump Ahead. 11. I Feel Like a Teenager Again, pp. 174
7. ↑ Jonathan Schaeffer, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Martin Bryant (1996). Chinook: The World Man-Machine Checkers Champion. AI Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 1
8. ↑ Authors - Chinook - World Man-Machine Checkers Champion
9. ↑ Martin Bryant, personal communication, August 2, 1996, published in Jonathan Schaeffer (1997). One Jump Ahead. 11. I Feel Like a Teenager Again, pp. 175
10. ↑ Colossus Chess - Still life in the old horse by Bryan Whitby, CCC, October 21, 2005
11. ↑ Chess Computers - The UK Story from Chess Computer UK by Mike Watters

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