Europe turns a page: Partnership ECU-ChessBase

by ChessBase
3/12/2015 – After some rocky years the new leadership of the European Chess Union has adopted a new media policy to better promote chess in the online community. ChessBase has become the Media Partner and will promote ECU events with special coverage. The Hamburg software company will also provide free or heavily discounted software for member nations. Press release.

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Press Release – 12.03.2015

Europe turns a page

ChessBase official Media Partner of the ECU

The European Chess Union's new media policy is a partnership with the main chess outlets, for the better promotion of chess, better conditions for the press and multiple benefits for the ECU members and annual competitions. The European Chess Union announces that ChessBase GmbH is an official Media Partner of ECU. An agreement was signed by both sides.

Meeting in Hamburg: Rainer Woisin, ChessBase Marketing CEO, Theodoros Tsorbatzoglou, ECU General Secretary, Kurt Gretener, senior ECU Officer, Matthias Wüllenweber, ChessBase Development CEO

Main points of the agreement

  1. Cooperation in the coverage of the ECU annual championships. The ECU will provide all the necessary material for the events' coverage and the Media Partner will promote the ECU in their event reports with ECU and tournament logos.

  2. A large package of free (or discounted) offers is made for the European National Chess Federations.

More specifically: each of the 54 European National Federation will receive free of charge by 31st May 2015:

A. ChessBase Premium Packages, which is bundled software, produced and distributed by the Media Partner, containing the following:

  • The ChessBase database program in the current version, namely ChessBase 13, Mega Database 2015, (approx. six million chess games, 68.000 with annotations);
  • Chess games upgrade for Mega Database until 31st December 2015;
  • Access to ChessBase Cloud and ChessBase Online Database (over seven million games);
  • Correspondence Chess Database 2013;
  • Endgame Turbo 4 (four DVDs with Syzygy tablebases);
  • One year premium membership on playchess.com;
  • One year subscription to ChessBase Magazine (six issues)

Each Premium package costs 370 Euros, so the total sponsorship value for 2015 is more than 20,000 Euros plus shipment expenses to its federation postal addresses.

B. For the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 the Media Partner will provide ECU Federations with free software updates and new products that will be agreed with ECU.

C. The Media Partner undertakes to provide ECU Federations the option of individually branded rooms on the Playchess server, which can be used for playing games, including online tournaments, online chess training, and online simultaneous exhibitions, free of any charge.

D. Workshops: The Media Partner undertakes to offer each ECU Federation participation in workshops at special (discounted) rates for the Federation’s administrative/managerial staff, coaches and officials, whereby the latter (staff, coaches and official) will be trained in the professional use of ChessBase, the website of www.playchess.com and the online chess server Playchess.com. The details of each workshop – venue, length, participating consultants and instructors/trainers, and cost-sharing/discount rates) will be agreed with the interested ECU Federations on an individual basis.

E. All the products and services of ChessBase at discount rates.


Press release – 03.03.2015

Bank of Georgia official Sponsor of ECU

The European Chess Union announces the official launch of the sponsorship program by Bank of Georgia, a private bank belonging to the UK company Bank of Georgia Holdings plc.

Bank of Georgia will financially support the European Chess Union in a four year program, as announced in the ECU General Assembly in Batumi. The first installments for the 2015 ECU budget have already reached the ECU Bank account in Switzerland.

Signing the agreement: Irakli Rekhviashvili, Bank of Georgia representative
for Central Europe, and ECU President GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili

Additionally Bank of Georgia is already supporting the establishment and popularization of chess at schools, as well as the training of prospective players, coaches and referees at chess training centers. Moreover there is a number of services in the private banking that will be offered to the chess world in premium conditions.

Brief profile: Bank of Georgia, the leading universal Georgian bank with operations in Georgia and Belarus is the largest bank by assets, loans, deposits and equity in Georgia. The bank offers a full range of retail banking and corporate and investment banking services to its customers across Georgia. Bank of Georgia’s UK incorporated holding company, Bank of Georgia Holdings plc, is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange (BGEO:LN[2]) and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Bank of Georgia remains to be the only Georgian entity to be rated by all three global rating agencies.


ChessBase GmbH is a German company that markets chess software and operates a server for online chess. Founded in 1986, it maintains and sells massive databases containing most historic games. This permit analysis that had not been possible prior to computing. Databases organise data from prior games, engines provide analyses of games and perfect play in some endgames.

ChessBase produces or markets the Fritz family of chess engines: Fritz, Rybka, Houdini, Komodo, etc., along with their integrated graphic user interfaces (standard across the family). ChessBase also maintains a news page that is available in English, German and Spanish. It has over 100,000 unique visitors per day.

Playchess is a commercial Internet chess server edited by ChessBase devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. Playchess has more than 300,000 registered members, including many internationally titled players who remain pseudo-anonymous. The site has staged 645,000 tournaments since 2001, and a total of 585,000,000 games have been played on the server.

ChessBase produces many training DVDs, including monographs on famous players, tactical training exercises, and training for specific opening systems. They publish ChessBase Magazine six times per year, with articles on database updates (including annotated games), opening novelties and overviews, tactics, correspondence chess, and other section. All these are designed for viewing within the database software.

ChessBase was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 1986. It has a staff of 25 and, in addition, 104 contributing authors. The range of products extends to over 500 titles.

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