Loser's POV: Johann Berger (Puzzles and Games)
We all saw this coming, right?
Unsurprisingly, Siegbert Tarrasch won the vote offered in the previous chapter (see here), meaning we get to take a closer look at his lesser-known opponent.
Johann Nepomuk Berger was born on 11 April 1845 in Graz, the second-largest city in Austria. By day, he was a lecturer in the city's university; by night (or whenever he wrote this stuff), he was an author, endgame theoretician, and world-renowned problemist. While we've previously talked about players who were better known in other sub-fields of chess than practical play (notably Emil Schallopp, see here), Berger was quite an extreme example, so I'd like to do something slightly different and focus almost entirely on this man's compositions and contributions to the theory of the game.
Berger supposedly learned the game in 1861, and only a year later, he received an honourable mention in the Problem Tournament at Düsseldorf 1862. Another year after that, again in Düsseldorf, he won the first prize in the same tournament. The rules required that each entrant submit two puzzles where checkmate is delivered in two to five moves; Berger's submissions were as follows:
White Mates in 4
White Mates in 5
Already, you should be able to see how differently puzzles were viewed back then; rarely was there one particular forcing line, but rather the beauty of the combination was that it worked against all possible defenses.
Berger won a handful of other first prizes, primarily in Germany but also abroad—the Westminster Chess Club held a problem tourney in 1874-75, and his set won there as well. His highest-profile successes came in the problem tourneys of international congresses: second at Paris 1878, and first prizes in Nuremberg 1883 and Frankfurt 1887 (where he was also a competitor). Each set contained multiple puzzles, a couple of which were even borrowed for the solution tournaments (where competitors had to solve puzzles within a time limit). The best examples are given below.
Paris 1878: White Mates in 3
Nuremberg 1883: White Mates in 4
Frankfurt 1887: White Mates in 4
Berger's love for problem composition was quite clear; he referred to it as chess's version of poetry in his prize acceptance speeches. This esteem was cemented when he published Das Schachproblem und Dessen Kunstgerechte Darstellung (The Chess Problem and its Artistic Representation) in 1884, which was not only a collection of puzzles, but had multiple chapters devoted to the art of construction itself. It was subtitled "A Guide for Problem Lovers," and was surely an invaluable resource for other composers.
In addition to problems, Berger was a consistent contributor to the theory of the game, both in the opening and the endgame. His articles on opening analyses were frequently published in both German and British periodicals, and he was one of the co-editors of the 1891 edition of Deutsche Schachzeitung—in this latter role, he took sole charge of the endgame section. This came only a year after publishing his second book, Theorie und Praxis der Endspiele, which was quickly considered the highest-quality work on the subject.
Finally, he is indeed the Berger after which the Sonneborn-Berger tiebreak system is named (for more on Sonneborn, see here), but I assume he would want his legacy connected with the theory and science of the game. Hopefully he would be pleased with my summary.
Berger's tournament playing career really began in 1870, when he won a large event in Graz with the dominating score of 24.5/26 (the only other noteworthy name, known broadly outside of Austria, was Carl Göring, who scored 22.5/26). It wasn't until the 80s that he started competing regularly, appearing in the Graz 1880 congress as well as all those of the German Chess Association. He made this list by virtue of finishing fourth at Nuremberg 1883, and sharing 5th-6th with Tarrasch at Frankfurt 1887.
Unfortunately for Berger, he was something of a caricature of the Vienna school, which was already notorious for boring games with uneventful draws. I've gathered all of the tournament games I could find where Berger drew in under 30 moves, which will hopefully explain (at least in part) why Berger finished as low on the list as he did:
As always, multiple explanations were given for this phenomenon. Some attributed it to his usually fragile health, while others mentioned that he lacked consistent practice in his rather rural hometown. Regardless, it's clear that Berger shouldn't be chiefly remembered for his results over the board.
This isn't to say that Berger didn't play good games, however. He took very few risks, and as a result, he was a tough nut to crack. Even worse for his opponents was when he did get an advantage, where he often found the cleanest way to convert it into something solid. This trait he shared with his countryman, Max Weiss (see here), along with—unsurprisingly, I hope—a rock-solid understanding of how to convert the endgame.
While his career as a player would continue for almost two more decades, Berger's results were never especially impressive. He remained an important figure in the chess world primarily through his editorship of the Deutsche Schachzeitung, as well as continued contributions to the problem and theory world.
As usual, a big thank you to simaginfan for a higher quality photo than what Google Books would give me.
I hope you enjoyed yet another departure from the usual formula (whatever that even is at this point). The next match, between Chigorin and Winawer, will be the last of the first round, and then we'll be off to the quarterfinals. It'll be a lot of fun, so I hope to see you there.
Who are you all rooting for in the ongoing Chess World Cup, by the way? Both Canadians were knocked out in the first round, so I'm a little dejected, but I'm hoping that Vladislav Artemiev can pull something off. Does anyone remember that tear he went on back in the first half of 2019? Gnarly stuff, that.
