Forty Years Ago: Kasparov vs. Hamburger SK

At Christmas 2025, Stefan Löffler delighted readers of his chess column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—one of Germany’s leading national newspapers—with a Christmas story. Forty years earlier, Garry Kasparov, still not yet world champion, had played a clock simul against the Bundesliga team of Hamburger SK and lost. Two years later, Kasparov returned to Hamburg as world champion. This time he won the rematch, and during the visit encountered a remarkable new development that was to change the game profoundly: a chess database.