DTFC - in memory of Paul Keres -

Will be 3 rounds and the final between the best six players. Serán 3 rondas y la final entre los seis mejores jugadores.

Paul Keres (one of the greatest chess players of all time, although he never won the world title despite his enormous talent, in chess circles he has been called "the eternal Uncrowned champion".

He was born in Estonia in 1916. He learned chess from his father and his older brother. With the paucity of chess literature in his small town, he learned chess notation through chess problems published in the local newspaper. He was known for a brilliant and precise attacking style.

Keres was a three-time Estonian collegiate champion. His playing style matured as he took up correspondence chess while he was in high school.

In 1935, at just 19 years old, Keres won the International Correspondence Chess Championship (IFSB) and won the Estonian national championship.
Keres rose to great world fame when he successfully competed in the Warsaw Chess Olympiad, after which he participated in several international tournaments and achieved triumphs over great masters such as José Raúl Capablanca and Reuben Fine, even managing to draw with the then world champion Alexander Alekhine. .
In 1938, Keres participated in the AVRO Tournament, where the eight best players of the time participated, obtaining first place over the other players: Alexander Alekhine (current world champion), José Raúl Capablanca and Max Euwe (former champions), Mikhail Botvinnik ( future world champion). The winner of this tournament was supposed to be the contender for the title of world champion; but the beginning of the Second World War meant that negotiations with the current champion, Alekhine, could not be concluded.

At the outbreak of World War II Keres was participating in the 1939 Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires. He stayed in that city to play in an international tournament in which he tied for first place with Miguel Najdorf. From there he returned to Europe where he played a 14 game match with former world champion Max Euwe in the Netherlands. Keres won by 7½–6½ (+6−5=3).
Keres played his first Soviet championship that year in Moscow, taking fourth place ahead of Mikhail Botvinnik, among others.
In June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the USSR and after a few months of campaign the German troops occupied Estonia for three years, which put Keres in difficult situations. To avoid reprisals from the Nazi authorities, he agreed to participate in the tournaments organized by the Third Reich in 1942, with Alexander Alekhine as his main rival. Keres's participation in such tournaments was used by the Nazis as anti-Soviet propaganda.
The restoration of the Soviet government over Estonia caused new problems for Keres as the USSR authorities arrested him after accusing him of "treason" for playing in tournaments organized by the Third Reich, but his refusal to get involved in politics and his great world fame freed him. of a serious sentence. The USSR government held him under suspicion for "anti-Soviet activity" for several years. In 1948 he came fourth in the Hague-Moscow Tournament from which the new world chess champion, the Soviet Mikhail Botvinnik, emerged. Keres made 10.5 points out of 20 in the tournament, which was a huge failure for him. In parallel, Keres won the USSR Chess Championship three times, defeating the likes of Efim Geller, Tigran Petrosian, Vasili Smyslov, Mikhail Botvinnik, Yuri Averbakh, David Bronstein, Mark Taimanov, Salo Flohr, Igor Bondarevsky and Alexander Kotov on each occasion. .
Keres participated in the FIDE Candidates Tournament and then the World Chess Championship five times, qualifying second, although he lost the match in Riga in 1965 against Boris Spassky and came third in the ranking. The fact of never qualifying to play a match with the world title in dispute earned him the nickname of "Eternal Second". Grandmasters Yuri Averbaj and Boris Spassky pointed out that Keres suffered from great pressure to stay physically and mentally fit, enduring the hostility of the USSR government, which would prevent him from offering his maximum performance in decisive instances.
Another of his outstanding performances was in the chess Olympics representing the USSR in Helsinki, Amsterdam, Moscow, Munich, Leipzig, Varna and Tel Aviv, and in all of them the Soviet team led by Keres won the gold medal; Other great results were his triumphs in Mar del Plata, beating Miguel Najdorf and at the same time finishing third in Zürich, tying there with Bobby Fischer.
Keres died suddenly in Finland of a heart attack in 1975 on his way back from the Vancouver chess tournament which he won. His funeral was attended by 100,000 people, including FIDE president and former world champion Max Euwe.

Chessmetrics ranks Keres in the top ten of the ten best chess players on the planet between 1936 and 1965.
Keres is one of the rare players in the world to have a favorable record in his games against the champion José Raúl Capablanca. He also had a favorable record of games against champions Max Euwe and Mikhail Tal, while his record shows draws against Smyslov, Petrosian and Anatoli Karpov.
Keres defeated 8 of the 9 world chess champions he faced in official tournaments, from Capablanca to Bobby Fischer, being the only chess player to achieve such a record, since the two times he played against the future champion Anatoli Karpov the game ended in boards.
Upon learning of Keres's death, Botvinnik said: "This is the biggest loss for chess since Alekhine's death." The five Estonian kroon note bears his image. A statue of Paul Keres has been erected in the Estonian capital. Asked why he was never world champion, Keres replied "I was unlucky, just like my country."  https://translate.google.com/

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