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ChessBase 17 - Mega package - Edition 2024
It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it. Start your personal success story with ChessBase and enjoy the game even more.
Normally only the office staff and the programmers attend our Christmas dinners, but this time Rainer had actually rented a train, with a lot of space for a lot of people. So we decided to include a wider circle of guests and friends, people who work peripherally with and for ChessBase. It was a merry ride in relaxed atmosphere. Join us and get to know the people behind the programs.
Rainer Woisin is always on the look-out for interesting occasions or events.
As head of the office he is in charge of most commercial decisions. He is also
the man that gets the 18 different components that go into the production of
any ChessBase software package to come together at a specific time and specific
location. Would you have thought of the stickers with the serial numbers for
the inside of the jewel cases?
This is what Rainer came up with this year: an historical underground train
which has been fully restored and turned into a stylish restaurant. The train
actually goes into the service loop between regular passenger trains, travelling
all the time in a giant circle. At stations it slows down but doesn't stop,
since people may otherwise try to board it.
The Hamburg central train station in the late evening
"Do not board the next train" says the sign. Jeroen van den Belt
knows this does not apply to the ChessBase staff and visitors. The next train
is for us!
Waiting for the guests to climb aboard: our two charming waitresses
They greet the guests with orange juice and champagne
Inside the historical underground train, with little booths, tables and benches
This is really pretty cool – Frederic Friedel, Yvonne Gerstorff, Mira
Kowalski and Gisela Jäger (mugshots and bios follow below)
The buffet with delicious (seriously!) American finger-food.
Food and drink in communicative atmosphere – on the rail
We even had a jazz trio, provided by our printer Ulrich
Leupelt (in the jacket)
Ben Bartels, Stefan and Ines Huschenbeth, Jeroen van den Belt with his beloved
Sony DSC-F717
Look who missed the train – Peter Schreiner, whom we contacted by cell
phone. He caught up an hour later when we made an unscheduled stop at the main
station. Peter is one of our technical support people, who also works in documentation.
He has looked after many chess programs and engines, and as such is an excellent
tester and debugger.
Martin Fischer is a Hamburg attorney who moonlights as the chief (and very
ambitious) tournament director on the Playchess.com
server. Lutz Nebe is one of the core ChessBase programmers, responsible among
other things for the database text editor and the Javascript replay board that
has become ubiquitous on HTML chess sites.
Martin Friedel, design and programming, Gisela Jäger, orders and shipping.
Details below.
Matthias Wüllenweber, one of the founders of ChessBase and chief project
manager. He is most recently responsible for the Playchess server, which has
become the fastest-growing chess server in the world. Matthias looks at the
giant Man vs Machine events mainly as a test of how much load the server can
take and how much bandwidth we are going to need in the future. On the right
is Dieter Steinwender, a computer chess expert who together with Frederic Friedel
founded the world's largest magazine on the subject twenty years ago. Computerschach
& Spiele is still going strong.
Mathias Feist joined the company in the late eighties and was responsible for
moving us from Atari ST into the DOS/Windows world. Mathias integrated the
first engines into the ChessBase interface, turning this into Fritz in 1991.
He has became involved in engine programming and reads machine language source
code like other people comic books. Mathias has played against all the strongest
chess players in the world – Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, you name them
– with excellent results. A minor detail: he is always assisted by Fritz
in these games.
Yvonne Gerstorff, one of our youngest. She came in as an intern and now, together
with Mira Kowalsky, is in charge of billings and finances. Yvonne is cheerful
and positive, and always good for practical advice.
Ésta es Nadja Woisin, the only person in the company who speaks fluent
Spanish. Which probably explains why she looks after our Spanish and South
American operations. Nadja makes great travelling arrangements. She is married
to Rainer.
André Schulz, who for many years ran the ChessBase hotline, fielding
around 100,000 calls from customers requiring assistance, advice or simply
companionship. Today André, who is a 2100 player, almost single-handedly
runs the German language web site of ChessBase.
Oliver Reeh, a strong IM (and Bundesliga player) who helps out with translations
and multimedia. He also plays a lot on the Playchess server, claiming he is
testing its functionality. He has been known to illicitly help André,
who usually does his own extensive testing on an adjacent computer.
Rainer Knaak, a genuine, honest-to-goodness chess grandmaster, who is in charge
of our data department. Rainer also produces ChessBase Magazine and looks after
most of the training CDs we put out.
Ben Bartels, who started some years ago as an apprentice, and now has become
our chief web master, in charge of practically everything that goes through
the Internet. He is also the main weapon in our battle against spam. Ben's
mother is from Oxford, England, so he is practically bilingual.
Anna Dergatschova, a strong chess player originally from Moscow, who lives
in Germany and has become our roving video reporter. A number of multimedia
reports on recent ChessBase Magazine were made by Anna, and she also sends
us pictures and reports from tournaments all over the world.
Martin Friedel, elder son of Frederic, programmer and designer in his own IT
company. Back in October 2002 Martin was confronted with the daunting task
of providing live Internet coverage of Kramnik vs Deep Fritz from Bahrain –
for up to five million viewers. In six weeks he developed the Flash system
that was subsequently used in Kasparov vs Deep Junior and Kasparov vs X3D Fritz.
Helga Wellershaus, in charge of shipping and delivery. If you need to Fedex
a digital camera to Uzbekistan you go to Frau Wellershaus. Watch out for the
giant boxes and packages that fill her room, especially around four p.m., when
the postal services and couriers are due.
One of our favourites, Gisela Jäger, in charge of orders and shipments.
Always bright, cheerful and interested in everything and everybody around her.
When you get a Fritz or ChessBase CD mailed directly from us it is Gisela who
processed it.
Mira Kowalski, who has been with us as our "finance minister" for
as long as anyone can remember. Mira is originally from Poland and her two
daughters did their commercial apprenticeships at ChessBase.
Frederic Friedel, the other founder of the company (back in 1986), today in
charge of contacts, PR and the English ChessBase web site. Together with Jeroen
van den Belt Frederic is addicted to staging events that are too big for anyone's
health or well-being.
Jeroen van den Belt, a relatively new ChessBase acquisition, who looks disconcertingly
like a certain Governor of a west-coast American state. Jeroen is responsible
for some of the coolest Playchess functions (e.g. the globe with NASA cloud
pictures, the multimedia lectures), but he also created the 3D driver for Fritz
– and more recently the X3D display for the Kasparov match. Like Frederic
he is a sucker for high-tension events, where the two are generally responsible
for everything that can go wrong.
Volker Rieck, who used to be the driving force behind Eidos in Germany and
introduced Fritz to the mass market in this capacity. Today Volker has his
own software distribution, Halycon,
which periodically publishes some of our programs.
Steffen Giering, who is doing a PhD in philosophy and works in advertising,
support and shipments at ChessBase.
Björn Lengwenus, one of the authors of our award-winning children's program
Fritz and Chesster: Björn is a progressive teacher in a Hamburg
school and the head of a chess club called Schachelschweine (porcupines).
Evi Zickelbein, who plays for the women's team of the Hamburg Chess Club and
sometimes sends us photo reports from tournaments. Her father Christian Zickelbein
is the head of the club and has done more for youth chess than probably anybody
else in the country.
Silke Schubert, who does translations, in discussion with Rainer Knaak, who
GMs
An intense philosophical debate between Frederic Friedel and Stefan
Huschenbeth. The latter is a computer animation expert who created the
remarkable photo-realistic
3D graphics for Fritz. Stefan is quite interested in esoteric subjects,
Frederic is a militant skeptic. It was a tinderbox atmosphere, but fortunately
it did not come to blows.
Now isn't that nice! Gisela Jäger, Anna Dergatchova and Evi Zickelbein
enjoying the ride
And the band plays on... A final song at the end of the ride.
Report and most pictures by Frederic Friedel