Chrilly Donninger

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Christian (Chrilly) Donninger, an Austrian computer scientist, statistician and professional computer chess, games and trading optimization programmer. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics from Vienna University of Technology and worked at Institute of Advanced Studies, Vienna and Siemens, until he became freelance chess programmer in 1993. Chrilly is author and co-author of various chess programs, most notably Nimzo and the FPGA chess entity Hydra under the patronage of the Pal Group of Companies and Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, discontinued in 2006, while Chrilly continued programming on the game theory related topic of bank trading optimization software for stock-markets. Since 2007 he is chief scientist for the Sibyl financial project of PAL group, and maintains the Sibyl Godot Finance Server along with Steffen Jakob. Besides, since 2010, Chrilly is lecturer in Quantitative Finance at the University of Jena.

=Chrilly's Programs=
 * Nimzo (Nimzo Guernica, Nimzo 3, Nimzo 98, Nimzo 2000)
 * Minimax a didactical open source program in Basic, with Dieter Steinwender
 * Hydra 97 with Alex Kure
 * Tiger Grenadier
 * Schweinehund
 * Brutus (FPGA)
 * Hydra

=Null Move= In 1993 Chrilly Donninger published the famous Null Move paper in the ICCA Journal and made Null Move popular to a great audience of computer chess researchers and programmers. Since then, also due to the concrete implementation in pseudo C, Null Move became standard in modern chess programs. =232= Donninger developed the Auto232 protocol not only to interface with the external Chess 232 Board to make playing PC programs a dedicated experience, but to play automatic matches between different computers via the serial RS-232 communication ports. The Interface software was able to "hook" the input and output of various commercial PC chess programs. With the advent and wider distribution of the standardized computer chess protocols such as the Chess Engine Communication Protocol and the Universal Chess Interface, supported by graphical user interfaces as well as chess programs, Auto232 became more and more obsolete.

=CHE= Chrilly introduced a Graphical Language for Expressing Chess Knowledge in Nimzo, CHE, which was apparently used as a root-preprocessor. Time Management issues were also on Chrilly's track. =Guernica= Nimzo Guernica was Donninger's first program, a manifest of Chrilly's Anti-war engagement.

=Éclat= Chrilly Donninger had strong objections and repugnance against the Iraq War, which began on March 20, 2003 with the United States-led invasion. His pacifism in conjunction with counter Americanism was justified by the traumatic experience of his father during World War II in Austria. Chrilly, at the same time somehow related with hosting of the upcoming Graz WCCC 2003 event, emotionally overacted and sent hatred e-mails to American computer chess programmers, which led to a boycott of the WCCC by those programmers and others, most notably by Bruce Moreland. Chrilly later apologized, but the hurt was already too big.

=Writer= Chrilly is regularly column writer in the German chess magazines KARL and Kaissiber. He also wrote for Modul, PC Schach, Computerschach und Spiele and the ICGA Journal.

=Selected Publications=

1987 ...

 * Chrilly Donninger (1987). Mathematische, statistische und computergestützte Methoden der Netzwerkanalyse. (Mathematical, statistical and programming methods for the Analysis of networks), Ph.D. thesis, Vienna University of Technology

1990 ...

 * Chrilly Donninger (1992). The Relation of Mobility, Strategy and the Mean Dead Rabbit in Chess. Heuristic Programming in AI 3
 * Chrilly Donninger (1993). Null Move and Deep Search: Selective-Search Heuristics for Obtuse Chess Programs. ICCA Journal, Vol. 16, No. 3
 * Ingo Althöfer, Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz, Valentin Rottmann (1994). On Timing, Permanent Brain and Human Intervention. Advances in Computer Chess 7
 * Chrilly Donninger (1994). A La Recherche du Temps Perdu: `That was easy' . ICCA Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1
 * Chrilly Donninger (1994). Die Kunst des Nichtstuns. CSS 2/94, pdf (German)
 * Chrilly Donninger (1996). Zauberlehrling - Das Auto232-Protokoll im Detail. CSS 1/96, pdf (German)
 * Chrilly Donninger (1996). CHE: A Graphical Language for Expressing Chess Knowledge. ICCA Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4
 * Chrilly Donninger, Klaus Manhart (1997). Der PC lernt Schach - Das Spiel der Könige. DOS, April 1997, pdf
 * Chrilly Donninger (1999). Computer machen keine Fehler. CSS 2/99, pdf (German)
 * Chrilly Donninger (1999). Der Fortschritt ist nicht aufzuhalten - Chrilly Donninger über Endspieldatenbanken. CSS  6/99, pdf (German)

2000 ...

 * Chrilly Donninger (2000). W. Steinitz gegen L. Gott. Kaissiber Nr. 15, pdf (German)
 * Wenzel Mraček (2003). Zu Besuch bei Christian „Chrilly“ Donninger. pdf (German)
 * Chrilly Donninger, Alex Kure, Ulf Lorenz (2004). Parallel Brutus: The First Distributed, FPGA Accelerated Chess Program. IPDPS’04
 * Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz (2004). The Chess Monster Hydra. Field Programmable Logic and Application, Springer, pdf
 * Carl Bicknell (2004). Interview with Chrilly Donninger, Subject: Hydra. Selective Search 113, pp. 19, pdf hosted by Mike Watters
 * Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz (2005). The Hydra project. Xcell Journal, Issue 53, pp. 94–97.
 * Chrilly Donninger (2005). Shredder gegen Hydra in Abu Dhabi. CSS online (German)
 * Chrilly Donninger, Ulf Lorenz (2005). Innovative Opening-Book Handling. Advances in Computer Games 11
 * Chrilly Donninger (2006). Plättchen zählen. pdf (German) » Mobility, Square Control
 * Chrilly Donninger (2007). Flugstunden mit Ken Thompson. pdf (German) » Brutus, Hydra

2020 ...

 * Ulf Lorenz, Christian Donninger, Muhammad N. Ali, Erdogan Günes, Christopher Lutz (2020). Hydra: Report and technical overview. ICGA Journal, Vol. 42, Nos. 2-3

=Forum Posts=
 * Different Hydra personalities against Rybka by Chrilly Donninger, CCC, December 13, 2005
 * I know something of Dr.Donninger by Chrilly Donninger, Hiarcs Forum, October 10, 2007
 * Re: I know something of Dr.Donninger by Chrilly Donninger, Hiarcs Forum, October 11, 2007
 * Re: I know something of Dr.Donninger by Harvey Williamson, Hiarcs Forum, October 16, 2007

=External Links=
 * Chrilly's ICGA Tournaments
 * Sibyl Godot: Finance Server by Chrilly Donninger and Steffen Jakob
 * Sibyl Godot: Finance Server - Chrilly Donninger


 * Bytes & Bauern – Brigitte Godot
 * Donninger, Chrilly from computer-go.info
 * Meet the Authors by Ed Schröder
 * Denkspiele und mehr - Chrillys Ecke (German) by Lars Bremer
 * Donninger, Christian from Schachcomputer.info - Wiki (German)
 * Jan Louwman, 1924 – 2002 Eric van Reem and Dr Christian Donninger remembering Jan Louwman, ChessBase News, December 06, 2002
 * Does Kasparov play 2800 Elo against a computer? by Chrilly Donninger, ChessBase News, August 26, 2003
 * Parallele Schachprogrammierung, ChessBase News, September, 16, 2003 (German)
 * From Brutus to Hydra - The mathematician Donninger about the evolution of his chess program, Danube University Krems, January 19, 2004
 * Hydra Chess - Hydra Team (Wayback Machine, October 23, 2007)
 * Workshop Jena 2008: Analysis, Design, and Programming of Games pictorial report by Ingo Althöfer

=References= Up one level