Paul Keres (7 January 1916 – 5 June 1975) was an Estonian chess grandmaster and chess writer. 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. As Estonia was repeatedly invaded and occupied during World War II, Keres was forced by the circumstances to represent the Soviet Union (1940–1941, 1944–1975) and Nazi Germany (1941–1944) in international tournaments.
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 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, along with Viktor Korchnoi, the strongest player never to become world champion.
Robert McFadden of The New York Times described Keres as having "elegant manners and an informal but unflappable bearing", and stated that "his competitiveness and well‐known sense of fairness made him one of the game's most popular figures".McFadden, R. D. (1975) PAUL KERES DEAD; KEY CHESS PLAYER. New York Times. [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/06/archives/paul-keres-dead-key-chess-player-estonian-grandmaster-59-placed.html (Accessed: July 7th 2025). Widely admired by Estonians to this day, he was nicknamed "Paul the Second", "The Eternal Second", and "The Crown Prince of Chess".David Hooper, Ken Whyld, Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press 1992, page 198
Early life Keres was born in 1916 in Joaoru,Birth records of the Narva Aleksandri congregation of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church (EELK Narva Aleksandri koguduse sünnimeetrika), 1914–1918. Estonian National Archives; RA EAA.1221.1.312. Page 102 a village in the Governorate of Estonia of the Russian Empire then situated just outside the city limits (now administratively part) of Narva, to parents Peeter and Marie Keres (née Lämmergas). He was two years old when Estonia became an independent country in 1918.
Keres grew up in Pärnu, Estonia. He 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.Paul Keres, Grandmaster of Chess: The Complete Games of Paul Keres, ed. and trans. by Harry Golombek, Arco, New York, 1977. In his early days, he was known for a brilliant and sharp attacking style.
In independent Estonia 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. In 1935, he won the Internationaler Fernschachbund (IFSB) international correspondence chess championship. From 1937 to 1941 he studied mathematics at the University of Tartu, and competed in several inter-university matches.Grandmaster of Chess: The Complete Games of Paul Keres, by Paul Keres, edited and translated by Harry Golombek, Arco, New York, 1977
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.rogerpaige.me.uk/tables4.htm 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).Grandmaster of Chess, by Paul Keres, Arco 1972, pp 188–89
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).http://www.chessmetrics.com, the Paul Keres results file
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. 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).
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, 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,Grandmaster of Chess: The Complete Games of Paul Keres, by Paul Keres, edited and translated by Harry Golombek, New York, ARCO Publishing 1972 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 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 drew an exhibition match at Stockholm 1938 with Gideon Ståhlberg on 4–4 (+2−2=4).
He continued to represent Estonia with success in Olympiad play. His detailed results for Estonia follow. Of note was the team bronze medal attained by Estonia in 1939; this was exceptional for a country with a population of less than two million people.http://www.olimpbase.org/players/cq6agwkb.html (1935, 1937, 1939 results); Grandmaster of Chess, by Paul Keres, translated by Harry Golombek, New York, ARCO Publishing 1972, p. 188 (1936 results) Warsaw 1935, Estonia board 1, 12½/19 (+11−5=3); Munich 1936 (unofficial Olympiad), Estonia board 1, 15½/20 (+12−1=7), board gold medal; Stockholm 1937, Estonia board 1, 11/15 (+9−2=4), board silver medal; Buenos Aires 1939, Estonia board 1, 14½/19 (+12−2=5), team bronze medal.
World Championship match denied
In 1938, he tied with Fine for first, with 8½/14, in the all-star AVRO tournament, held in various cities in the Netherlands, ahead of chess legends Mikhail Botvinnik, Max Euwe, Reshevsky, Alekhine, Capablanca and Flohr. Keres won on tiebreak because he beat Fine 1½–½ in their individual two games.
It was expected that the winner of this tournament would be the challenger for the World Chess Championship, in a match against World Champion Alexander Alekhine, but the outbreak of the Second World War, especially because of the first occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in 1940–41, brought negotiations with Alekhine to an end. Keres had begun his university studies in 1937, and this also played a role in the failure to set up a match.
Keres struggled at Leningrad–Moscow 1939 with a shared 12–13th place; he wrote that he had not had enough time to prepare for this very strong event, where he faced many Soviet top players for the first time. But he recovered with more preparation time, and won Margate 1939 with 7½/9 (+6−0=3), ahead of Capablanca and Flohr.
World War II
During World War II, the previously independent nation of Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940. This lasted until the 1941 invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany, which in turn lasted until the Soviet Union reoccupied Estonia in 1944. The country remained under Soviet control for the rest of Keres' life. The 1944 Soviet reconquest of Estonia was a particularly dangerous time for Keres.
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Keres was in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the Olympiad. He stayed on to play in a Buenos Aires international tournament after the Olympiad, and tied for first place with Miguel Najdorf with 8½/11 (+7−1=3).
His next event was a 14-game match with former World Champion Max Euwe in the Netherlands, held from December 1939 – January 1940. Keres won a hard-fought struggle by 7½–6½ (+6−5=3). This was a superb achievement, because not only was Euwe a former World Champion, but he had enormous experience at match play, far more than Keres.
First Soviet occupation (1940–41) Estonia was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Red Army in June 1940, and formally annexed by the USSR in August 1940. Keres played in his first Soviet Championship at Moscow 1940 (URS-ch12), placing fourth (+9−4=6) in an exceptionally strong field, placing him ahead of the defending champion Mikhail Botvinnik, among others. The USSR Chess Federation organized the "Absolute Championship of the USSR" in 1941, with the top six finishers from the 1940 championship meeting each other four times; it was split between Leningrad and Moscow. Botvinnik won the event, one of the strongest ever organized, with 13½/20, and Keres placed second with 11, ahead of Vasily Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky, Andor Lilienthal, and Igor Bondarevsky.
In 1941, Keres graduated from the University of Tartu and the same year, married fellow student Maria Riives. The couple had two children: a son, Peeter (born in 1941), and a daughter, Kadrin (born in 1943). Both children were born while Estonia was under occupation.
German occupation (1941–44) After Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Estonia came under German control a few weeks later. During 1942 and 1943, Keres and Alekhine both played in four tournaments organized by Ehrhardt Post, President of the Grossdeutscher Schachbund. Alekhine won at the Salzburg 1942 chess tournament (Six Grandmasters' Tournament) in June 1942, at Munich (European Individual Chess Championship) in September 1942, and at Prague (International Tournament) in April 1943, always ahead of Keres, who placed second in all three of those tournaments. They tied for first at Salzburg (Six Grandmasters' Tournament) in June 1943, with 7½/10.
During World War II, Keres played in several more chess tournaments. He won all 15 games at Tallinn 1942 (Estonian championship), and swept all five games at Posen 1943. He also won the Estonian title event held at Tallinn 1943, and Madrid 1944 (13/14, +12−0=2). He was second, behind Stig Lundholm, at Lidköping 1944 (playing hors concours in the Swedish Championship). Keres won a match with Folke Ekström at Stockholm in 1944 by 5–1 (+4−0=2).
As resident of German-occupied Estonia (then part of Reichskommissariat Ostland) in 1941–1944, Keres was able to travel across the European continent and participate in a number of international tournaments, held both in neutral countries (1944 Madrid, Lidköping, Stockholm) and in countries under Nazi German control (1942 Tallinn, Salzburg, Munich; 1943 Prague, Posen, Salzburg, Tallinn).