Ortvin Sarapu

Ortvin Sarapu ( Ortvin Sarapuu, born January 22, 1924 in Narva, † 13 April 1999 in Auckland ) was a New Zealand chess player of Estonian origin.

Life

He learned to play chess at age eight. His model was also made of the Narva derived Paul Keres. 1940 won Sarapu in Pärnu, the Estonian Junior Championship. In 1943 he managed to flee his home country initially occupied by Finland. Later he was interned in Sweden until the end of the war. Then he came to Denmark and made a name for themselves as a chess player, among other things, he won the city championship in 1946 in Copenhagen. Then he was invited in 1949 to an international tournament in Oldenburg. There he finished in 5th place, but won against the tournament winner Efim Bogolyubov. In this tournament, he met the New Zealand champion Robert Graham know Wade, who helped him through a letter of recommendation for a visa.

From 1950 Sarapu lived with his wife Barbara, born Bialonczyk, in New Zealand and won the first national championship in 1952. In the same year he played in Auckland a match against Cecil Purdy, which ended 4:4 with 2 draws. 1957 Sarapu won the championship of Australia.

In 1966 he was awarded by the World Chess Federation FIDE the title of International Master and qualified for the Interzonal in Sousse 1967, in which, however, he ended up with only 4 points out of 22 rounds on the last place.

In the course of his chess career, he was 20 -time national champion, which means a world record, and played 1970-1992 at 10 Chess Olympiads for his adopted country, where he was very popular and the chess life were many impulses.

His best historical Elo rating was 2577th This he achieved in September 1950.