I was looking into a google search someone had made to find my site and I came upon this from a 1902 tournament in Monte Carlo as reported in the NY Times. It mentioned pairings were “being guided by the Berger tables,” as if it were a new thing. Does anyone know anything about the creator of the Berger tables?
TIA
PS. Just noticed a followup from a few days later: click here.
Johann Berger
11 April 1845, Graz – 17 October 1933
According to the Oxford Companion, the pairing tables were first published by Richard Schurig in 1886 in Deutsche Schachzeitung. "With scant regard for chess history FIDE calls Schurig’s creation ‘Berger tables’ because Johann Berger gave them, duly acknowledged, in his two Schachjahrbucher (1892-3 and 1899-1900).
Thanks.
It’s quite helpful just knowing his full name and finding this Wikipedia Article. I saw he discussed a tiebreak system with William Sonneborn but they opposed it and its alternate name is Neustadtl system.
So, who’s Crenshaw?
I’ve heard of a Crenshaw Foundation but I don’t know if it is the same person who reversed the Berger tables. The original Berger tables had a flaw in that, for example a 12 player tournament, players 1-6 would have white against 12-7 respectively in the first round. In the 2nd round player 1 would have his 2nd white in a row (against 2) while player 7 has his 2nd black in a row. Crenshaw fixed this, but it was overkill. IMHO, just change the colors that don’t involve player 12, e.g., 1 has white against 12 but 2-6 have black against 11-7 respectively. For subsequent rounds you can usually just add 1 to the previous round’s opponent and swap the color. Since it is a loop of players, no. 1 will follow 11.
Check out schedule.htm or demo.htm for some examples.
He was a guy who used to come and watch the U.S. Championship every year and donate a thousand or so for best-game prizes. When there were dropouts in the Championship a couple of times in a row, he proposed reversing the round order, which would allow adjustments for colors when someone withdrew. It’s not nice to argue with a donor, so his proposal was adopted. I’m fairly sure he’s dead now, as he was pretty old even back in the 1980s.
I found a Crenshaw Foundation had contributed to the Baylor University student union (Ed Crenshaw was an alum and is CEO of Publix Groceries). A Crenshaw Foundation is getting ready to have a golf tournament in Alabama. It probably isn’t not be the same person since this Crenshaw is in his late 50’s.
Color reversals can also be done for my change to the Berger tables, I just need to work them out. This is a side by side comparison of the two.
I doubt any of these are the same Dr. Craig Crenshaw we are talking about. He was a player from Virginia, and I believe he died in the early 1990s.
Color reversals for dropouts in the Berger tables are much more difficult (if even possible) because the unbalanced colors (rounds in which a player gets the same color two rounds in a row) are “frontloaded.” Crenshaw was correct that his version solved this problem. However, I don’t think the question ever arose again in a U.S. Championship. My only real objection to the Crenshaw tables is that the Berger version is much easier to do in your head.
I agree.
The only difference between C-B and P-B is how the players are numbered. If you seat the same ten people in the same ten positions at the boards in rr3.htm, they will have identical schedules so far as who, when, and colors–the only difference is pairing numbers. I still have to work out the color reversals for my table or copy the old ones and make a global substitution for each size table.
As an aside, in the late 60’s I ran a team selection tournament at LSU in RR format, one round a week. After the first round two players dropped out who fortunately had opposite colors (but not against each other) in the first round. The 2nd round was played with the guys paired against the dropouts met each other and I was able to shorten the tournament by two rounds except for some makeup games. Thinking I had done something useful I tried to write about it but found (I had done the pairings in my head) I had rotated the players the wrong way and had played the final round pairings except the ghost had White. 
For the revised schedule I used the book and the “frontloaded” table in use at the time.