Paul Keres is regarded by many as the strongest chess player to never win a world championship. His impressive play and charming personality made him a popular figure both in and outside the chess world. When he died at the relatively young age of 59, a crowd of 100,000 Estonians turned out for his funeral procession in Tallinn. However, his life was also marred by stress and health issues, brought on in a large part by the suffocating grip of the Soviet regime on chess.
Together with Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, Jimmy reflects on the life and career of “Paul the Second”, which includes various personal encounters with Keres as well as many stories involving other legendary players, including Fischer, Korchnoi and even Capablanca.
Jimmy's full Paul Keres series will be published in november and can be pre-ordered at a 20% discount on the New In Chess website: https://www.newinchess.com/keres
0:00 – Intro 2:40 – Jimmy’s initial obsession with Paul Keres 5:15 – What attracted Jimmy to Keres specifically? 8:45 – Meeting Keres personally 15:20 – Keres’s hilarious Capablanca anecdote 17:02 – AD BREAK 18:10 – Keres’s love of tennis, attending the Wimbledon final 20:45 – More funny anecdotes about Reti, Flohr 24:05 – Was Keres politically pressured by the Soviet regime to not defeat Botvinnik? 28:55 – Keres’s constant harassment by the KGB 31:53 – AD BREAK 33:58 – Keres’s best results 36:20 – Keres’s personal issues 40:30 – The things that surprised Jimmy the most about Keres 43:15 – Jimmy’s discussion with Korchnoi about Keres 44:00 – Why was Keres always the “eternal second”? 45:49 – Keres’s friendship with Spassky 48:25 – Keres’s fluency in several languages 50:33 – Jimmy tells a hilarious story about Fischer and Najdorf 53:26 – AD BREAK 54:06 – Keres’s relationship with Fischer 1:00:10 – Keres’s great annotations 1:03:16 – Keres’s legacy, large state funeral in Estonia 1:07:57 – Outro