homage to his teacher.
Torre first came to international attention when he attended the great
New York 1924 tournament and impressed both the American and European masters with the high quality of his
speed chess and analytical ability. The website
Chessmetrics.com
Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.
Implementation
Chessmetrics is a weighted average of past performance. The score considers a player's win percen ...
places Torre as eighth in the world following his tour of Europe. He was awarded the Grandmaster title in 1977.
Torre's career was cut short by mental illness. Torre spent much if not the remainder of his life hospitalized following his breakdown in 1926. A coming marriage that was broken by a
Dear John letter is believed to have played a role in his breakdown, according to ''
The Oxford Companion to Chess''. Chess historian
Edward Winter, however, regards this as an open question.
Reuben Fine visited him many years later and found that he still played very well.
[The game is included in Fine's book ''Lessons From My Games'' (1958), along with some comments on Torre's demeanor and condition.]
Major tournament results
Torre won the Louisiana state championship at New Orleans 1923, and began to reach world prominence in 1924. He was first at Detroit 1924 (25th
Western Open
The Western Open was a professional golf tournament in the United States, for most of its history an event on the PGA Tour.
The tournament's founding in 1899 actually pre-dated the start of the Tour, which is generally dated from 1916, the y ...
), followed by
Samuel Factor
Samuel ("S. D.") Factor (Faktor) (22 September 1883,His birth year is sometimes given as 1892. According to the Szachowa Vistula article about Factor, his obituary in the 1949 New York Times gave his age as 65, which would support the 1883 bir ...
,
Herman H. Hahlbohm,
Norman Whitaker,
Samuel Reshevsky
Samuel Herman Reshevsky (born Szmul Rzeszewski; November 26, 1911 – April 4, 1992) was a Polish chess prodigy and later a leading American chess grandmaster. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from the mid-1930s to the mid-196 ...
, etc. He won at
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located i ...
1924 (with Jennings). In 1924, Torre took third place in New York (
Abraham Kupchik won).
In 1925, he made his European debut, in events with much stronger and deeper fields of more experienced masters. Torre took tenth place in
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with France, ...
(
Alexander Alekhine won). In 1925, he tied for third-fourth places with
Frank Marshall, behind
Aron Nimzowitsch
Aron Nimzowitsch ( lv, Ārons Nimcovičs, russian: Аро́н Иса́евич Нимцо́вич, ''Aron Isayevich Nimtsovich''; 7 November 1886 – 16 March 1935) was a Latvian-born Danish chess player and writer. In the late 1920s, Nimz ...
and
Akiba Rubinstein, in
Marienbad. In 1925, he tied for fifth-sixth with
Savielly Tartakower in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
(
Efim Bogoljubow won), tied for second-third in
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
(quadrangular;
Solomon Gotthilf won). In 1926, he tied for second-third places with
Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy (; 3 March 1870 – 29 May 1951) was a Hungarian chess player, one of the leading players in the world in his time. He was one of the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE in 1950.
Early career
...
, behind Marshall, in Chicago. In 1926, he won, ahead of
José Joaquín Araiza, in Mexico City.
Legacy
The
chess opening Torre Attack is named after him. It is characterized by the moves: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5. Torre also introduced the
Mexican Defence to chess theory in a match against
Fritz Sämisch
Fritz originated as a German nickname for Friedrich, or Frederick (''Der Alte Fritz'', and ''Stary Fryc'' were common nicknames for King Frederick II of Prussia and Frederick III, German Emperor) as well as for similar names including Fridolin an ...
in 1925 in
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with France, ...
, Germany. It runs: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6.
A
memorial tournament in his honour has been held annually since 1987 in his native city.
"The Windmill"
In the
Moscow 1925 chess tournament This international super-tournament, organised by Nikolai Krylenko, was held at Moscow in the Soviet Union, from 10 November to 8 December 1925. It was the world's first state-sponsored chess tournament. There were eleven foreign stars and ten Sov ...
, Torre defeated former
world champion
A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
Emanuel Lasker with a
queen sacrifice. The famous sequence is known as "The
Windmill
A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications, in so ...
":
:Torre vs. E. Lasker
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 c5 4.e3 cxd4 5.exd4 Be7 6.Nbd2 d6 7.c3 Nbd7 8.Bd3 b6 9.Nc4 Bb7 10.Qe2 Qc7 11.0-0 0-0 12.Rfe1 Rfe8 13.Rad1 Nf8 14.Bc1 Nd5 15.Ng5 b5 16.Na3 b4 17.cxb4 Nxb4 18.Qh5 Bxg5 19.Bxg5 Nxd3 20.Rxd3 Qa5 21.b4 Qf5 22.Rg3 h6 23.Nc4 Qd5 24.Ne3 Qb5 (''diagram'')
Torre wins with a queen sacrifice, as his
rook and
bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ...
form a
grindstone that crushes Black with a series of
checks
Check or cheque, may refer to:
Places
* Check, Virginia
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Check'' (film), a 2021 Indian Telugu-language film
* ''The Checks'' (episode), a 1996 TV episode of ''Seinfeld''
Games and sports
* Check (chess), a thr ...
and
discovered checks.
:25.Bf6 Qxh5 26.Rxg7+ Kh8 27.Rxf7+ Kg8 28.Rg7+ Kh8 29.Rxb7+ Kg8 30.Rg7+ Kh8 31.Rg5+ Kh7 32.Rxh5 Kg6 33.Rh3 Kxf6 34.Rxh6+ Kg5 35.Rh3 Reb8 36.Rg3+ Kf6 37.Rf3+ Kg6 38.a3 a5 39.bxa5 Rxa5 40.Nc4 Rd5 41.Rf4 Nd7 42.Rxe6+ Kg5 43.g3
Notes
References
External links
Carlos Torre Repetto un campeón sin corona – Ajedrez Magdalena JaliscoCarlos Torre vs Emanuel Lasker – Ajedrez Magdalena Jalisco*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torre Repetto, Carlos
1904 births
1978 deaths
Mexican chess players
Chess grandmasters
Chess theoreticians
Sportspeople from Yucatán (state)
Sportspeople from New Orleans
People from Mérida, Yucatán
20th-century chess players