A day at the ChessBase office in Hamburg

by Sagar Shah - 31/08/2017

We have all seen companies, how they function, how people work there, the nine to five job, the daily drab work with the papers and numbers! Well, what if there is a chess company with people in there working on chess. Your favourite game! What if instead of papers you have chess boards and pieces and DVDs and interesting puzzles littered all around you! Yes, it's a dreamworld for every chess lover and it does exist at Osterbekstraße 90A, 22083 Hamburg. Come, let's have a look at the ChessBase headquarters in Germany.

Photos by Amruta Mokal with her Samsung S8+

Just a few days are left for the World Cup 2017 to begin in Tbilisi, Georgia, where Amruta and I will be present as reporters. Before making our way to that event, we decided to spend a few days in Hamburg and visit the ChessBase headquarters to meet our friends, tell them about our progress at ChessBase India and forge new plans. Well, every time I go to the ChessBase office in Hamburg I feel as if I have come home. Around 22 people come to work at the office and when you go near them you often see a chess board open and they are analyzing something or checking a game on playchess or just making some chess manual! Grandmasters regularly keep pouring in to do shows or record DVDs. A day at the ChessBase office is like visiting Mecca for a chess player!

The road that leads to the ChessBase headquarters in Hamburg

Next time you are in Hamburg, that's where you should be going!

A short video that gives you an entire look into the ChessBase office

The entrance of the ChessBase office

The first room is the accounts department. Even that doesn't look so boring!

Next we have Dr. (yes he is Ph.D) Steffen Giehring, who ensures that the support provided to all the customers of ChessBase is of the highest quality

Steffen travels to the ChessBase office on a bicycle. He travels one and a half hour on it every day. It's his way of staying fit.

Andre Schulz, the editor-in-chief of German newspage works under the watchful eye of Magnus Carlsen

The wall in Andre's office is filled with posters, autographs and many interesting things!

The central area which has all the latest DVDs on display

Thomas ensures that all the DVDs reach the customers on time!

Thomas is assisted by Holger. The amount of DVDs that they have pack and courier is quite huge!

If you enjoy playing on Playchess, you must thank Martin Fischer! Martin is also a lawyer and one who has encyclopaedic knowledge about ChessBase softwares. He gives lectures about it all over the world.

That's the recording studio! Pascal Simon, the head of content creation with the visiting author GM Nick Pert. Nick is working on a very interesting DVD that is interactive and gives you points for every move you make! At the end, you can judge with the amount of points you have earned and judge as to which level you are on currently.

A very nice lunch followed at the nearby Vietnamese restaurant. In the picture are co-founder of ChessBase Frederic Friedel, editor of Spanish page Nadja Wittmann and the newly appointed editor-in-chief of English newspage Macauley Peterson.

The food was sumptuous!

Soon we were joined by the other co-founder of ChessBase Matthias Wullenweber. Here, I am showing him all the work done by ChessBase India in the one and half year of our existence.

Matthias, who is a great fan of modern technology, shows Amruta and Frederic his Samsung Gear!

The founders of ChessBase with the founders of ChessBase India!

The sign of a long standing support between ChessBase and ChessBase India. The CEO of ChessBase Rainer Woisin with the author of these lines!

ChessBase office is a wonderful place for any chess player to visit. Each and every person there is dependent on the game of chess for their livelihood. It is a perfect representation of how powerful our game of chess is. The value added to the world of chess by ChessBase is huge. I hope that someday ChessBase India too will have something like this in India and we will be able to enhance the livelihood of many chess players in the country.