I can feel for poor Zukertort who claimed Riga as his city of birth, but the only records discovered to date indicate he was born in Lublin.

This is probably due to my own birth... I was physically born in a hospital in one city, but my family residence at the time of my birth was in another city; as near as I can figure the other city's hospital was closer when my mother went into labor. So I have two birth certificates: one from the first city that states I was born there AND I have a birth certificate from my state government which gives my place of birth as the second city. And if you ask my younger sisters where I was born you will get a third city as the answer, probably because all of them were born in that city and I was also baptized in that third city.

This is why I'm willing to cut Zukertort some slack on stating that Riga was his place of birth. He may very well have been born in Riga, but his family residence at the time of his birth was probably in Lublin. I wonder if there is any family connection (maternal or paternal) to Riga?

Yes, very unclear still. The switch from Riga to Lublin seems to have been based on a statement of Emil Schallopp, who in turn got his information from Herr Adolf Zukertort, JH Zukertort's younger brother. All of this being reported by James G Cunningham, a noted chess writer/historian.

But who is to say whether his brother had been properly informed, or just preferred Johannes' memory to be disassociated from Russia. His father we know travelled about a lot with his work, so if there was ever a time that his wife accompanied him, then that might account for a Riga birth, without there being any known family connection to that city.

Jean Defuse: Why presented chessgames.com not Zukertort's full name?

Telemus: <This was bungled by Adams.>

Can someone explain that to me in more detail?

see: Johannes Zukertort

I also checked the results of each individual game against the crosstables. All look correct.

Regarding the order of names in the tables: Both Paige tables are in Sonneborn-Berger order. Neither of the McGowan ones are. Di Felice's 1938 table is in the same order as McGowan's; whereas his 1939 table is in the same order as Paige's. My preference is for tables to be in Sonneborn-Berger order - therefore my preference would be for the Paige tables.

Di Felice gives the dates of the 1938 tournament as 24 July-7 August 1938; and these match the dates of the first and last rounds. And he gives the dates of the 1939 tournament as 9-23 July 1939 - again matching the dates of the first and last rounds.

Chessbase's Megabase 2017 also gives Round 8 as being played on 31 July 1938.

I suppose I could say I was more or less asking if having crosstables in S-B order is a chessgames.com preference or not.

<are we sure S-B score was used> I suppose we cannot be certain, though it seemed to be the preferred tie-break method in those days (eg this is how Keres came ahead of Fine in the AVRO 1938 tournament).

Looking at both the McGowan tables and your links, it could be that there is nothing more to their order than being alphabetical...

The first crosstable is at the beginning of the book and it is a "Deutsche Turniertafel" introduced by Conrad and Post, which is simultaneously a crosstable, a progress table and a pairing table. There is a final column entitled "Rang", which means rank, and there Michel and Kieninger have both "II-III", etc. (Only players in the top half are ranked here.)

The second crosstable is at the end of the book, and it is a usual crosstable where players are sorted according to points. And only by points, because here all pairs and triples of players with equal points are on the same places, which is indicated by brackets around the place numbers.

Generally, I thought the form chessgames wanted the crosstables in was the numbering down the side to match that at the top. But effectively bracketing players with '=', etc is ok to me.

But I do find just having just '=2', etc is a little irritating as it's not immediately clear how many players that place is shared with! (and makes it a bit harder to find column for the player). So my preference is '2-3=', etc. Anyway, I've adjusted my table that way and you might like to have a look to see what it looks like Game Collection: German Championship 1938 It's not quite as neat, but I think it's significantly clearer what's going on. (An alternative could be to just have the numbers 1-16 down the LHS as before and have a separate column after the points giving the placings.)

In this, I have included the results for the games played by Holzwarth (who withdrew after 4 rounds and had his score cancelled). I think it is best practice to include any played games that today would be eligible for rating (for example, this has been done in the table for the 1967 Interzonal for Fischer's games). And it makes it easier for anybody attempting to do historical ratings. For example, Rod Edwards did not include these 4 games in his Edo ratings because he was not aware of them. Had he been so, I am almost certain that he would have included them.

<Tabanus> A couple of quick questions:

(1) So I know what is the preferred practice: You prefer not to head up the points column with 'Pts'?

<(1) So I know what is the preferred practice: You prefer not to head up the points column with 'Pts'?> Err... yes, I stopped adding Pts after some years, Thought it was unnecessary and prettier without.