The First Chess Database: ChessBase's Origin
ChessBase was founded in Hamburg in 1986 by physics student Matthias Wüllenweber, science journalist Frederic Friedel, and chess trainer Gisbert Jacoby, after Friedel hosted then-World Champion Garry Kasparov and the two discussed how a searchable database of games would simplify preparing for specific opponents. ChessBase 1.0 shipped for the Atari ST in January 1987, and the company formally became ChessBase GmbH in 1988. Nearly forty years later, in April 2026, Freedom Holding Corp acquired the company outright, a deal we cover in full in our news coverage.
The conversation that started it
Friedel invited Kasparov, already World Champion, to his home in 1985, and Kasparov mused that a searchable database of games would make preparing for a specific opponent's habits and repertoire far more efficient than working from memory and printed game collections. That single offhand remark from the reigning champion is the entire origin of what would become the industry-standard chess software company.
From idea to shipped software in under two years
Friedel began working with Wüllenweber, a physicist by training, who built the first working version of what became ChessBase 1.0, released for the Atari ST in January 1987. The company's formal incorporation as ChessBase GmbH, with a real office and employees, followed in 1988, a fast progression from casual conversation to genuine company.
What it actually replaced
Before ChessBase, serious opening and opponent preparation meant physical books, hand-annotated notebooks, and whatever a player or their second could recall from memory. A searchable, sortable database of games by player, opening, or position turned that entirely manual process into something closer to genuine research, a shift in kind, not just convenience.
Why this is worth revisiting now
Forty years after that first conversation with Kasparov, ChessBase changed hands again: Freedom Holding Corp, a Kazakhstan-founded fintech conglomerate, acquired the company in April 2026 for roughly €5 million, with stated plans to expand its AI-powered features. A company built on the idea of making game data searchable is now, four decades later, being folded into a much larger financial technology ecosystem, a genuinely different kind of second act than its founders likely expected in 1986.
The throughline across forty years
Whether it is a physicist building the first searchable game database by hand-coding an Atari ST program, or a fintech conglomerate's AI roadmap four decades later, the underlying business has always been the same: turning raw chess data into something a serious player can actually use to get better. That idea, not any specific piece of software, is ChessBase's real, lasting contribution to the sport.