Interesting memories from Leonard there. "uppity undergraduate"!
Maybe the quizzical look was because Berger maybe knew full well that he had only won because it was a "wild game marred by time trouble", or maybe it was because Alekhine wasn't world champion at that point (or even because Berger finished "next to last" in the tournament)?
I hope John won't mind me quoting in full what he provided from Leonard and BCM in that footnote, as it completes a bit more of the picture of Berger:
snippet from BritBase wrote:published results give the name as V Berger but Leonard Barden is of the opinion that this is indeed Victor Berger (sometimes given as Victor Buerger - 1904-1996) who had not otherwise been an active player for many years. Leonard believes Berger lived near the tournament venue and has a vague memory of greeting him during the event. Berger's name does not appear in records of competition chess that I can find after 1952, nor is he in any grading list that I have looked at, so it is a surprise to find him competing as late as 1981. Here is Berger's 1996 BCM obituary, penned by Bernard Cafferty: "Victor Berger, who for a long time wrote his name as Buerger, died in early March after a distinguished chess career between the wars. Born in Russia in 1904, he came to England as a child and was educated here. In 1922 he won the junior section of the City of London club and by the mid-20s was a leading Middlesex player who took part in cable matches with the USA and played in international tournaments such as London 1927 (see the BCM book of this event) and Margate 1937, where he finished next to last but took the scalp of Alekhine in a wild game marred by time trouble. Note that this was in early April, when Alekhine had not yet recovered his world title from Euwe, so Victor could not aspire to the honour of being a Briton who had beaten the current world title holder. Only Penrose could claim this till the days of Miles and Short. In recent years Victor was a member of the Roehampton club, and was kind enough to make available to BCM mementoes from his collection such as the score sheets of the London 1927 event."
I wonder if any traces of Berger's games remain in the Roehampton chess club history and local newspapers (I believe some of that club history has been unearthed by Richard James in his Minor Pieces)?
I wonder where the scoresheets "made available to BCM" from the London 1927 event are now?
There are some classic lines from the bulletin of that 1981 Lloyds Bank Masters, including confirmation of the draw being adjusted to meet norm-seeker requirements:
"[Yacob Murey's] 2570 performance has nothing to do with the Swiss System but more to do with the fact that, as we were pairing him to offer the opportunity for a gm norm, he met no unrated opponents".
The comments on Hebden's "foolish attitude" to early setbacks at the most recent British Championships, and Smyslov's struggles against younger opponents are also documented.
[John, there is a small typo here: "something that is hard to leam and can only be achieved through experience"]
Quick question. Is the chess IM Ravikumar ("Ravi") Vaidyanathan related at all to the Imperial College professor of the same name? I have no idea how likely it is that they are related.
It is interesting to see where some of those who played at the 1981 Lloyds Bank Masters are now. One example I alighted on was Ed. W. Formanek, at the time a US International Master, who is more famous for being the first IM to lose to a computer (in 1988), but at the time of the 1981 tournament in London already held a doctorate in mathematics (he worked on polynomial identity rings) and should be added to the list of academics who hold international chess titles (worked at Penn State from 1978 to 2009, becoming professor of mathematics there):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_W._Formanek