Eugene Torre

Torre did this by winning the silver medal in the 21st Chess Olympiad in Nice, France.

Eugenio "Eugene" Torre (born November 4, 1951) is a Filipino chess player.

It was the brainchild of William Ritson-Morry who organized the inaugural event in 1951 in Birmingham, England.

This tournament was held annually from 1958 to 2012.

This tournament was held annually from 1958 to 2012, a grand total of 54 editions without any interruptions.

At that time, this was only the 2nd international tournament held in Jakarta the first being the FIDE Zonal 10 Tournament in 1963.

Torre scored a whopping 12/14, going undefeated with 10 wins and 4 draws.

Eugene Torre participated in the 1969 (10th) and 1971 (11th) editions of the Junior World Chess Championship, an under-20 chess tournament (players must have been under 20 years old on 1 January in the year of competition) organized by the World Chess Federation (FIDE).

In the 1971 edition held in Athens, Greece in July–August, a record forty-four players from forty-three countries participated in six preliminary groups.

Werner Hug of Switzerland was the surprise winner, scoring 8.5/11.

Two years before, he had only finished fifth in Final C. More highly touted players finished lower like Hungarian Chess Olympiad team member and future World Championship candidate Zoltán Ribli who finished second (8/11); the strong American player Kenneth Rogoff finished third (7.5/11); and Torre and the Soviet Grandmaster Rafael Vaganian, who were among three players (Renê Borngässer) that scored 6.5/11 finishing in a tie for fourth to sixth places.

with Torre finishing in 4th place after the Sonneborn Berger (SB) tie-break system was employed.

In 1972, Torre won the Asian Zonal Championship and became an International Master (IM), becoming the Philippines' third IM after IM Rodolfo Tan Cardoso who gained his title after winning the silver medal in the 1956 Chess Olympiad and IM Renato Naranja who achieved his IM title in 1969 when he won the Asian Zonal in Singapore.

In September 1972, a Torre – Cardoso showdown was held to determine the Philippines' best player with the winner playing the top board for Team Philippines in the Skopje Olympiad to be held later that month.

It was supposed to be a six-game match but after Torre opened up an unassailable two-point lead (3.5–1.5) with 2 wins and 3 draws, the 6th and last game was no longer played.

In 1972/1973, Torre tied for 1st place with Hungarian GM Levente Lengyel and International Master Ljuben Popow, also known as Luben Popov of Bulgaria, in the Reggio Emilia series known as the Torneo di Capodanno with a score of 7/11.

In 1972/1973, Torre tied for 1st place with Hungarian GM Levente Lengyel and International Master Ljuben Popow, also known as Luben Popov of Bulgaria, in the Reggio Emilia series known as the Torneo di Capodanno with a score of 7/11.

In 1973, Torre participated in the 1973 Leningrad Interzonal Tournament where he played against the world's top players such as future World Champion Karpov, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Korchnoi, Bent Larsen and Robert Eugene Byrne, among others.

In 1974, at 22 years old, he became the first Filipino and non-Soviet Asian to qualify for the title Grandmaster.

In a tournament in Manila in 1976, Torre was then the only one to beat the then-reigning World Champion Anatoly Karpov in a game that has become part of Filipino chess history.

Torre reached prominence in 1976 as a possible future title challenger after winning a strong four-man tournament in Manila ahead of World Champion Anatoly Karpov – thus becoming the first player to finish ahead of Karpov in a tournament since the latter became world champion.

In the summer of 1976, three grandmasters traveled to Manila, Philippines to participate in the Marlboro-Loyola Kings Challenge chess tournament.

They were (in order by Elo): World Champion Anatoly Karpov (2695) from the Soviet Union, Ljubomir Ljubojević (2620) from Yugoslavia, and Walter Browne (2585) from the United States.

They were joined by grandmaster Eugenio Torre (2505) from the Philippines for a double-round robin event.

The average rating of the players qualified the tournament as a category XV event.

Torre defeated the world champion in the second round, and went on to finish clear first ahead of Karpov, a feat no one had yet accomplished since the latter had become world champion.

The final standings and crosstable are as follows:

Later in the same year 1976, Torre topped the 2nd Asian Masters held from 23 August to 10 September at Jakarta, Indonesia.

The event qualified as a Category III event with an average Elo rating of 2304.

In 1977, Torre (2550) finished tied for 5th-6th places at the strong Geneva Tournament held from March 26 to April 11, 1977, with GM Ludek Pachman where he recorded 4 wins, 6 draws and 3 losses (7.0/13) but ended up 6th after the SB tiebreaks were applied losing out to Pachman, 47–43.

At the 1st Burroughs Computers Grandmaster Tournament held on April 5–19, 1978, Torre copped second-place finishing with a score of 8/12 on the strength of 6 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses just behind winner Miguel Quinteros.

The first leg was held in Baguio City, Philippines, the third leg in Jakarta, Indonesia and the fourth leg in Penang, Malaysia.

In 1979, Torre topped the 7th Marlboro Classic, a 14-man tournament held in Manila in January 1979 finishing clear first, a point ahead of GM Fridrik Olafsson of Iceland and 2 points ahead of top seed Josif Dorfman, a Soviet-French Grandmaster, with a score of 10/13.

He is considered the strongest chess player the Philippines produced during the 1980s and 1990s, and played for the Philippines on board 1 in seventeen Chess Olympiads.

In 2021, Torre was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.

In 1982 he gained a spot in the World Chess Championship candidates matches, where he lost to Zoltán Ribli.

He served as Bobby Fischer's second in the 1992 match against Boris Spassky in Yugoslavia.

He currently plays for the Rizal Towers of the Professional Chess Association of the Philippines.

Compatriot Rico Mascariñas earned an IM norm in the same event where he tied for 3rd place with 10/14 (+8, =4, -2).

He ended up in a tie for 13th-14th places in the 18-man round-robin tournament where he finished with 4 wins, 7 losses and 6 draws (7/17) but scored big wins over Tal and Larsen.