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Winning starts with what you know
The new version 18 offers completely new possibilities for chess training and analysis: playing style analysis, search for strategic themes, access to 6 billion Lichess games, player preparation by matching Lichess games, download Chess.com games with built-in API, built-in cloud engine and much more.
Our database driven news page has been online for exactly twenty years now. Before that we had a static web site, one that looked like this:
Above is the first web page (nice yellow, blinking text!) that we could locate in the Wayback archives. Note that ChessBase 6.0 had just been released. That was December 1996.
The news page two years later, with "Anand's analysis competition". Anand also annotated Groningen for ChessBase Magazine 63 (which contained a Fritz 5 update!).
In August 2000 the news page got a big makeover – a template driven page with static HTML files uploaded to the server. You could do that for a couple of years at the time, but at some stage it becomes necessary to install a modern database driven system.
Can you imagine when exactly we launched the new database driven ChessBase.com news page? It went online on September 11th 2001! The very first report we had to upload was on the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. Here it is, in fairly much the same form it was published twenty years ago.
9/12/2001 – Yesterday, in one of the most horrifying terrorist atrocities in history, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed. We extend our deepest sympathies to the people of America. Our thoughts and feelings are with the victims and their families. The World Trade Center had a special meaning for chess. In 1995 the World Championship was staged on the Observation Deck on the 107th floor.
In 1995 the PCA world championship, sponsored by Intel, was held between Garry Kasparov and Vishy Anand, ranked first and second in the world. The prize fund was 1,500,000 US$, with 2/3 for the winner. Here are some pictures I took of the event, which was staged on the Observation Deck at the 107th floor of the World Trade Center, 400 meters above New York City's financial center Wall Street.
Crossing from New Jersey to New York on the Staten Island Ferry
Sep 11, 1995, 107th floor of the World Trade Center (South), Rudy Giuliani makes first move of my WCh match vs Anand. pic.twitter.com/Uc4ighmaxO
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 11, 2015
Kasparov pondering a move on the 107th story of the World Trade Center
Audience watching the moves of game 16
GM Yasser Seirawan explaining the position in the VIP room
Following chess moves on the observation deck
Garry Kasparov ponders a move in the glass cabin built for the players.
Thomas Friedel feeling a bit queasy while looking down on Manhattan...
...from the very top of the World Trade Center
Looking back from the ferry to New Jersey after the games.
