Hoogoven Schaaktoernooi Keres, Bestanddeelnr 922-0145

The Paul Keres Memorial Tournament is a

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

tournament played in honour of chess grandmaster

Paul Keres 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 ...

(1916–1975). It usually takes place in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. ...

, Canada and

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju '' ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

. An annual international chess tournament has been held in Tallinn every other year since 1969. Keres won this tournament in 1971 and 1975. Starting in 1977 after Keres' death, it has been called the Paul Keres Memorial Tournament. From 1991, the tournament has been held yearly and changed into a

rapid Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a ''run'' (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a ''cascade'' ...

event. From 1999 this tournament also had a women's section. In the past twenty years, apart from this rapid tournament, several other memorial tournaments have been played in honour of Keres. In 1975, Keres won a tournament in Vancouver. It was his last tournament he would ever play in, as on his way back to his native Estonia, he died from a heart attack. There has been an annual memorial tournament in Vancouver ever since.

Tallinn

Tallinn International

The Tallinn International has been held every other year from 1969 to 1989. It was named after Keres from 1977. :

Tallinn Rapid

From 1991 the Tallinn international has been replaced by an annual rapid tournament. From 1999, the tournament has had a separate women's section. :

Keres Memorial Festival

In the 1990s there have been several Keres memorials in Tallinn which were played at regular

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. Time controls are typically enforced by means of a game cloc ...

. These tournaments seem to have been held irregularly. At present there is an annual Keres Memorial Festival which started in 2004 with a special rapid tournament, where

Viswanathan Anand Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand (born 11 December 1969) is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion. He became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and is one of the few players to have ...

emerged as a winner, followed by a regular tournament. The winners of the regular tournament for 2004 and subsequent years are listed below. The field of these tournaments has been notably weaker than that of the rapid tournaments. :

Vancouver

The tournament in Vancouver has been played ever since Keres won it in 1975. It was Keres' final tournament, as he died shortly thereafter.

References

{{Chess tournaments Chess in Canada Chess competitions Chess in Estonia Chess memorial tournaments