- Bela Berger
Béla Berger (12 August 1931, Szombathely, Hungary - December 2005, Sydney, Australia) was a Hungarian-Australian chess master.
He took 5th in the Hungarian Championship at Budapest 1953 (
Béla Sándor won). [ [http://www.chessdiscountsales.com/news/2005.htm News 2005 ] ] In 1954, he played for Hungary "B" at fourth board in 1st Triennial Cup in Budapest. [ [http://www.olimpbase.org/1954tr/1954id01.html OlimpBase :: 1st Triennial Cup, Budapest 1954, individual results ] ]After the failure of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 , Berger left Hungary for Australia, where he won theNew South Wales state title in 1957 and 1961. He played in the Australian Championship in Sydney in 1958/59, finishing second with 11.5 points, behindLajos Steiner 's 12.5.National champion John Purdy was one of Australia's two representatives at the 1963 Pacific Zone 10 Championship in
Jakarta . There was a quadrangular selection tournament in Melbourne for the second spot. Bela Berger andKarlis Ozols tied for first; the selectors voted in favour of Berger 3-0.In Jakarta, he tied for first with Indonesia's
Arovah Bachtiar on 5.5/8, and won the playoff 2-1 after 3 games. A fourth game was won by Bachtiar, but it had no bearing on the outcome, as the tiebreak system used favoured Berger. As zonal champion, he became anInternational Master .He went on to play in the 1964
Interzonal tournament in Amsterdam, with 18 grandmasters and 6 international masters, finishing 23rd out of 24. The joint winners wereVassily Smyslov ,Bent Larsen ,Mikhail Tal andBoris Spassky . [ [http://www.auschess.org.au/bulletins/acfb348.htm#bela Australian Chess Federation newsletter ] ] Berger tied for 7-8th at Manila 1968 (Meralco Open,Svetozar Gligorić won). [ [http://www.indochess.com/news_maint_public.php?news_id=1983 Indochess ] ]In 1991, he won a short match against Charles Pizzato (2 : 0). [ [http://www.chessmetrics.com Welcome to the Chessmetrics site ] ]
References
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
