BERGER Johann

The winner of the tournament in Graz (1870), chess theorist and composer.

You can hardly find a man who would show themselves in all areas of chess to the same extent as Johann Berger. And despite the fact that a professional chess player, he was never. Throughout his long life he lived in his native Graz, directing a private school. Serviceability and this man can not but admire. Berger was a very prolific chess composer, author of numerous multi-path problems.

For thirteen years he led the magazine Deutsche Schachzeitung. In addition, the Austrian player to play a lot of correspondence. He owns a record performance. In a tournament organized by the magazine Monde Illustre Berger won the 45 parties with three draws. Many generations of players have grown on his four-volume work on the endgame. No one dozen years the best book about endings simply did not. Over the chessboard of his achievements were much more modest. His first and only international tournament he won in his hometown. At the beginning of the century he was involved in a variety of competitions. In separate batches Johann won the best artists of the time, but exactly go the distance tournament has never been able to. After each failure Berger vowed and swore that it was his last tournament, that did not stop him with enviable regularity to participate in the next. Love for chess has always prevailed:

Modern chess associate the name of Berger in the first place, with a system of coefficients