ChessBase

ChessBase GmbH is a German company that markets chess software, maintains a chess news site, and operates a server for online chess. Founded in 1986, it maintains and sells massive databases, containing most historic games, that 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.

The company

The company is located in Hamburg, Germany. ChessBaseUSA markets their products in the United States, and some products are released in partnership with Viva Media (USA).

The database

The company hosts an extensive online database. As of 28 August 2010, this contained 5.2 million games. This online database can be accessed directly through their database programs.

It used to be possible to utilise the functionality of this database from Chessbase's Pocket Fritz 2, which runs on PDAs, but some of this functionality was reduced in early 2006. ChessBase is also the name of a popular commercial database program produced by the company for storing and searching records of games of chess. The first version was built for Garry Kasparov under Atari ST in January 1987 and later for Microsoft Windows. ChessBase uses a proprietary format for storing games, but can also handle games in portable game notation (PGN). The proprietary format uses less hard drive space and manages information that is not possible in PGN. The software converts files from PGN to ChessBase format, or from ChessBase to PGN.