Christian Donninger

Christian Donninger (* 1957 in Wels ) is an Austrian chess programmer .

Life

Christian Donninger was born in Wels, Upper Austria in 1957 and studied mathematics at the University of Vienna . He completed his studies with a doctorate in statistics . After that, he worked for several years at the Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies and Siemens until it in 1993 as a chess computer - programmers became independent. Since 1999 he has lived in Altmelon in Lower Austria . He is known in the computer chess scene by the nickname Chrilly .

His programs Nimzo (last version 8, 2001) and Schach dem Schweinhund (2000) were distributed by ChessBase . While Nimzo was aimed at the highest possible skill level and compete with programs like Fritz and Shredder was, the program should bastard respond by voice output and special handicap levels less good chess player. Donninger's follow-up project Brutus was only financed by ChessBase for a short time as it was not seen as being commercially viable.

At the end of 2003, Donninger was asked by a sheikh from Abu Dhabi if he wanted to develop a chess program based on the preparatory work done at Brutus that would be able to defeat the human world champion. Donninger accepted the offer and, together with the Paderborn computer scientist Ulf Lorenz , the Cologne grandmaster Christopher Lutz as chess consultant and the Pakistani Ali Muhammad Nasir as project manager, developed a chess computer called Hydra , which in 2005 won a major competition against the English world-class player Michael Adams at that time number 7 in the world rankings.

Donninger is part of the permanent team of authors for the German-language chess magazines KARL and Kaissiber .

Web links

• Visiting Christian Donninger (DOC file; 56 kB)
• PROFILE Article
• Chrilly's Corner - Columns and Articles