“That year…” would be a bit better.

<and last year's winner Anthony Miles >

“and the previous year’s winner…” would be a bit better.

<The prize money was set at 86,500 Dutch guilders>

This is an American site, in 2018. A reference to what that would be in 2018 American dollars would be nice.

<Later on, some of the players claimed they felt uncomfortable with this man lying on a table in front of them>

“their opponent” sounds a little better to my year than “this man”.

<and before Round 10, four players filed an official complaint. >

86,500/3.755 ~= $23,035.95 (1985 value)

$23,035.95 in 1985 → $53,981.62 in 2018

Berger tables are a topic that have some up in other forums. I have a python program that makes easy work of generating a full pairings schedule from a canonical Berger list:

Vladimir Petrov (kibitz #710)

Which took about 20 seconds to do.

This routine comes in very handy at times, and is based on same algorithm FIDE uses for their published pairing tables.

But <Phony> has mentioned other pairing schedules, which are presumably variants of the Berger tables. Does anybody know where any of these variants are described, if so, I could add them in to my routine.

I have noticed some recent tournaments don't exactly follow the canonical Berger schedule - which can be very frustrating (given that they almost do, but not quite).

Side note - reconstruction of Berger list given the full schedule of one player.

Yes, given all the round pairing of any given single player, the entire tournament schedule can be reconstructed - provided the schedule is a canonical Berger pairing.

I don't know a quick closed form method - but I use my round pairings to determine the Berger list iterating through the various allowed Berger order number for the player - stopping when the Berger list matches the tournament games colorings for all the pairs.

<jnpope> Thanks. I re-calculated (hopefully correct) and added it to the last line before the table instead. So they won about 10,000 USD (in 2018 value) each, not bad!

The "vote on collections" on top of this page is now in red, meaning I nominated it.

I’ve not bothered with the round by round commentary, as it seems more centred around pairing changes after Korchnoi’s withdrawal than anything interesting.

There's not much that will be new to you, as the two main controversies dominated the articles, but perhaps some of the finer details, or phrasings from these snippets, will be helpful.

---

“Short scored his first ever victory against Karpov, earning $1,000, but then lost to Ivanchuk and Yusupov.”

“The organizers managed to upset the maximum number of people by refusing to allow Spain’s Miguel Illescas to play (they didn’t want to reduce the Category), and by making Viktor Baturinsky chief arbiter, causing his old antagonist Viktor Korchnoi to withdraw without pushing a pawn.”

<CHESS magazine May 1989, p.5>

---

“The prestigious Spanish tournament has come to fill the ‘black hole’ that used to be February in the international chess calendar.”

Short almost withdrew in January because there was great uncertainty about the dates.

The insistence on Category 16 came from ‘La junta Andalucia’, one of the main sponsors. Most parties involved were critical, and felt that the point of such a tournament was to ensure that a promising Spaniard gets his chance of first class practice. It must have been especially frustrating for Illescas when Korchnoi left and he was still not a welcome substitute, as they would rather proceed with an odd number than reduce the category.

“Illescas received a consolation payment of $3500.”

“Korchnoi walked out after he found that his objection to chief arbiter, Viktor Baturinsky, former KGB colonel and chess disciplinarian, had not been considered.”

“A compromise that Baturinsky, who speaks Spanish, should have nothing to do with Korchnoi’s games, was rejected.”

“… Ivanchuk, 20 … currently, he is doing his army service …”

“The margin of his victory over all the players apart from Karpov, suggests that he is close to joining the two Ks at the top of the chess elite.”

<BCM, April 1989, pp. 141-143>

---

Of course, Korchnoi goes into great detail about this affair in his book <Chess Is My Life>, with the usual conspiracy theories - i.e. Karpov pushed hard for Baturinsky, knowing it would upset Korchnoi, Rentero was complicit etc. He also says that Timman and Short openly supported his objection ... and to the great surprise of Karpov, so did Beliavsky and Yusupov, two people that Karpov may have regarded as 'comrades in arms'. Gulko apparently wanted to support, but was too fearful of losing the tournament if there was some mass withdrawal. Korchnoi appreciated this and was not angry with Gulko, who had supported him in the past (over the boycott, for example).

Korchnoi speculates that had Gulko openly supported him, then it was possible that the consensus would have changed. Baturinsky would then have been forced out and, of course, Karpov would withdraw and the tournament would collapse.

https://zanchess.wordpress.com/2018...

Interestingly, <Marshall> is listed as coming from <Boston>

Good luck if anyone is tempted to check the cg.com version of the games. Some of that text is quite blurred/distorted where it adjoins the centre fold.

I appreciate efforts of people like <jnpope>, <paderamo>, <Jack O'Keefe> and others who help make primary materials accessible to all of us researchers.

I'll take a challenge to transcribe any given game from <sachistu>'s scan - just tell me which one!

(Phony can attest that these scans are far, far better than many of the newspaper columns we have to work with)

PS - <ripped off> applies to <Moravia Press>'s material too.

<it's searchable>

That's because he used OCR scanning during the copying. This allows the published PDF to eventually be found and cataloged by Google for its searches.

Maybe not so compelling for this one example, but as a general principle it is critical for complete researching.

Yes, I could probably work all those moves out too, with a chessboard and multiple zooming, but it wouldn't be fun. Maybe my eyes are bad.

But on a second reading I thought it might be misinterpreted (this being the internet and all that) - so I switched into pedantic mode a little (not that I always need encouragement).

And speaking of encouragement, I definitely want to encourage contributors efforts in making this material available - even if it's not 100% perfect.

Speaking of imperfections - I updated the tournament book PDF tonight - including the missing material that <sachistu> sent me, but I mistakenly missed on my first attempt.

It should all be there this time round:

Is that Spassky contract really true? One notices that he had a couple of draws somewhat shorter than 40 moves.

<should probably be attributed to someone> Done. It was from Leontxo Garcia in Jaque 280 p. 163, "como un hotel de lujo sin televisión en las habitaciones."

<Is that Spassky contract really true?> It's from Garcia in El Pais 18 Feb, "Rentero, organizador del torneo, contrató a Boris Spasski bajo una peculiar claúsula que le obliga a realizar 40 movimientos como mínimo en cada partida."

<replaced Miguel Illescas Cordoba (#105), who played last year, by Gulko. >

“replaced Miguel Illescas Cordoba (#105), who played the previous year, with Gulko” would be much better.

<Despite negotiations, Korchnoi withdrew.>

Negotiations with, between, who, what?

<Karpov played well as usual>