ChessBase

ChessBase is a German company that develops and sells chess software, maintains a chess news site, and operates an internet chess server for online chess. Founded in 1986, it maintains and sells large-scale databases containing the moves of recorded chess games. The databases contain data from prior games and provide engine analyses of games. Endgame tablebases are also provided by the company. ChessBase India, ChessBase's Indian YouTube channel, has amassed more than 2.5 million YouTube subscribers and more than 2.5 billion total views as of December 2024. Starting in 1983, Frederic Friedel and his colleagues put out a magazine Computer-schach und Spiele covering the emerging hobby of computer chess. In 1985, Friedel invited then world chess champion Garry Kasparov to his house. Kasparov mused about how a chess database would make it easier for him to prepare for specific opponents. Friedel began working with Bonn physicist Matthias Wüllenweber who created the first such database, ChessBase 1.0, as software for the Atari ST. The February 1987 issue of Computer-schach und Spiele introduced the database program as well as the ChessBase magazine, a floppy disk containing chess games edited by chess grandmaster John Nunn. The August 1991 issue of Computer-schach und Spiele announced that Dutch programmer Frans Morsch's Fritz program would soon be available for purchase as software for PCs.