Paul Keres

Paul Keres (7 January 1916 – 5 June 1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer.

He was two years old when Estonia became an independent country in 1918.

Keres first learned about chess from his father and his elder brother Harald (afterwards a prominent physicist, who later told friendly jokes to his students: "I am not Paul's brother; Paul is my brother").

With the scarcity of chess literature in his home town, he learned about chess notation from the chess puzzles in the daily newspaper, and compiled a handwritten collection of almost 1000 games.

In his early days, he was known for a brilliant and sharp attacking style.

He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, and narrowly missed a chance at a World Chess Championship match on five occasions.

Keres was a three-time schoolboy champion of the country, in 1930, 1932, and 1933.

His playing matured after playing correspondence chess extensively while in high school.

He probably played about 500 correspondence games, and at one stage had 150 correspondence games going simultaneously.

Keres achieved a very good result at the age of 17 in a Master tournament in Tallinn 1933 with 5/7 (+5−2=0), tied 3rd–4th, half a point behind joint winners Paul Felix Schmidt and V. Kappe.

In 1935, he won the Internationaler Fernschachbund (IFSB) international correspondence chess championship.

Keres became champion of Estonia for the first time in 1935.

He tied for first (+5−2=1) with Gunnar Friedemann in the tournament, then defeated him (+2−1=0) in the playoff match.

In April 1935, Keres defeated Feliks Kibbermann, one of Tartu's leading masters, in a training match, by (+3−1=0).

Keres played on for Estonia in the 6th Chess Olympiad at Warsaw 1935, and was regarded as the new star, admired for his dashing style.

His success there gave him the confidence to venture onto the international circuit.

At Helsinki 1935, he placed 2nd behind Paulin Frydman with 6½/8 (+6−1=1).

He won in Tallinn 1936 with 9/10 (+8−0=2).

Keres' first major international success against top-level competition came at Bad Nauheim 1936, where he tied for first with Alexander Alekhine at 6½/9 (+4−0=5).

He struggled at Dresden 1936, placing only 8–9th with (+2−4=3), but wrote that he learned an important lesson from this setback.

Keres recovered at Zandvoort 1936 with a shared 3rd–4th place (+5−3=3).

He then defended his Estonian title in 1936 by drawing a challenge match against Paul Felix Schmidt with (+3−3=1).

From 1937 to 1941 he studied mathematics at the University of Tartu, and competed in several interuniversity matches.

Keres had a series of successes in 1937.

He won in Tallinn with 7½/9 (+6−0=3), then shared 1st–2nd at Margate with Reuben Fine at 7½/9 (+6−0=3), 1½ points ahead of Alekhine.

In Ostend, he tied 1st–3rd places with Fine and Henry Grob at 6/9 (+5−2=2).

Keres dominated in Prague to claim first with 10/11 (+9−0=2).

He then won a theme tournament in Vienna with 4½/6 (+4−1=1); the tournament saw all games commence with the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 Ne4, known as the Döry Defence.

This successful string earned him an invitation to the tournament at Semmering–Baden 1937, which he won with 9/14 (+6−2=6), ahead of Fine, José Raúl Capablanca, Reshevsky, and Erich Eliskases.

Keres tied for second at Hastings 1937–38 with 6½/9 (+4−0=5) (half a point behind Reshevsky), and at Noordwijk 1938 (behind Eliskases) with 6½/9 (+4−0=5).

Keres won the AVRO 1938 chess tournament, which led to negotiations for a title match against the reigning World Champion Alexander Alekhine, but the match never took place due to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Keres drew an exhibition match at Stockholm 1938 with Gideon Ståhlberg on 4–4 (+2−2=4).

As Estonia was repeatedly invaded and occupied during World War II, Keres was forced by the circumstances to represent the Soviet Union (1940–41, 1944–75) and Nazi Germany (1941–44) in international tournaments.

Keres, in his autobiographical games collection, refers to this major event as a 'Candidates' Tournament', and claimed that he was recognized as a Grandmaster after winning it, although its parallel connection with later FIDE-organized Candidates' tournaments (from 1950 onwards) is not exact, and the Grandmaster title was not formalized by FIDE until 1950.

Keres was runner-up in the Candidates Tournament on four consecutive occasions in 1953–1962.

Due to these and other strong results, many chess historians consider Keres one of the greatest "Super grandmasters" in history, and the strongest player never to become world champion.

Widely considered an Estonian national hero, he was nicknamed "Paul the Second", "The Eternal Second", and "The Crown Prince of Chess".

Keres was born in the town of Narva (now in Estonia), then Petrograd Governorate of the Russian Empire.

He tied for 4–5th places at Kemeri with 11½/17 (+8−2=7), as Salo Flohr, Vladimirs Petrovs and Samuel Reshevsky won.

Then he tied 2nd–4th in Pärnu with 4½/7 (+3−1=3).