The man behind the Fritztrainer courses: Pascal Lautenschläger

by André Schulz
10/1/2024 – Pascal Lautenschläger is the man behind the Fritztrainer courses. As head of video production, he recently produced his 500th Fritztrainer title. He was also recently honoured for his 20th anniversary with ChessBase. At the Chess Olympiad in Budapest Amruta Mokal used the opportunity to interview Pascal and to ask him about his work with some of the greatest players of all time.
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The Chess Olympiad in Budapest brought together many chess fans from all over the world, not only players, professionals and amateurs, but also many journalists and chess fans who are connected to chess in other ways. Pascal Lautenschläger, who has been the head of video production at ChessBase for many years, is one of them. Pascal Lautenschläger (formerly Pascal Simon - he took his wife's name after marriage) is celebrating two anniversaries at the moment. He has been with ChessBase for 20 years and has recently produced his 500th Fritz trainer.

Pascal started to work for ChessBase in 2004. He then went on to study business administration, but continued to work part-time until he became head of video production after graduating. In fact, he had already gained his first professional experience at ChessBase in 2000, while still at school, as part of an internship.

In response to Amruta's question as to whether Pascal could tell any interesting stories from his many years of experience, he told, among other things, of a very popular Indian who really got into a sweat at the ChessBase studio in Hamburg.

He was talking about Vishy Anand, who, after becoming World Champion made two ChessBase courses, in which he presented and explained some key games from his magnificent chess career. Anand lives in Madras in southern India and should be used to higher temperatures. At the time of the recording of his two Fritz Trainer DVDs, however, the temperatures in northern Germany and Hamburg had almost reached southern Indian levels, and the studio lights did the rest...

The first DVD with videos from Anand's chess career reflects the very beginning of that career and goes as far as 1999. It starts with his memories of how he first learned chess and shows his first great games (including those from the 1984 WCh for juniors). The high point of his early developmental phase was the winning of the 1987 WCh for juniors. After that, things continue in quick succession: the first victories over Kasparov, WCh candidate in both the FIDE and PCA cycles and the high point of the WCh match against Kasparov in 1995.
Running time: 3:48 hours

Vishy Anand is one of the greatest chess talents of all times. On this DVD he speaks about his career, his views on chess, and presents the most beautiful and interesting games of his career.

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André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.