Martin Bryant (born 1958) is a British computer programmer known as the author of ''White Knight'' and '' Colossus Chess'', a 1980s commercial

chess-playing program Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

, and ''Colossus Draughts'', gold medal winner at the

2nd Computer Olympiad The Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which computer programs compete against each other. For many games, the Computer Olympiads are an opportunity to claim the "world's best computer player" title. First contested in 1989, the majori ...

in 1990.

Computer chess

Bryant started developing his first chess program – later named ''White Knight'' – in 1976. This program won the European Microcomputer Chess Championship in 1983, and was commercially released, in two versions (' and ') for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron in the early 1980s. ''White Knight'' featured a then-novel display of principal variation – called "Best line" – that would become commonplace in

computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

. Bryant used ''White Knight'' as a basis for development of '' Colossus Chess'' (1983), a chess-playing program that was published for a large number of home computer platforms in the 1980s, and was later ported to

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

and

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

as ''Colossus Chess X''. ''Colossus Chess'' sold well and was well-received, being described by the '' Zzap!64'' magazine in 1985 as "THE best chess implementation yet to hit the 64, and indeed possibly any home micro". Bryant later released several versions of his Colossus chess engine conforming to the UCI standard. The latest version was released in 2021 as Colossus 2021a.

Computer draughts

After chess, Bryant's interests turned to computer draughts (checkers). His program, ''Colossus Draughts'', won the West of England championship in June 1990, thus becoming the first draughts program to win a human tournament. In August of the same year it won the gold medal at the

, beating '' Chinook'', a strong Canadian program, into second place. ''Chinook'''s developers, headed by Jonathan Schaeffer, recognised ''Colossus''' opening book as its major strength; it contained 40,000 positions compared to ''Chinooks 4,500, and relied on Bryant's research that had found flaws in the established draughts literature. In 1993, an agreement was made to trade ''Colossus''' opening book for the ''Chinook'''s six-piece databases;''One Jump Ahead'', p. 361 Bryant also accepted the offer to join the ''Chinook'' development team. In August 1994, ''Chinook'' played a match against World Champion Marion Tinsley and world number two Don Lafferty (after Tinsley's withdrawal due to illness), earning the title of Man-Machine World Champion. Bryant continued work on ''Colossus Draughts'' in the early 1990s, and in 1995 released an updated commercial version called ''Colossus '95'', as well as draughts database programs ''DraughtsBase'' and ''DraughtsBase 2''. Bryant lives in the Manchester area and retired in 2020. More information can be found on his website.

References

External links

Colossus home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bryant, Martin Living people British computer programmers Place of birth missing (living people) Video game programmers Computer chess people 1958 births