Paul Keres Memorial Tournament

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The Paul Keres Memorial Tournament is a chess tournament played in honour of chess grandmaster Paul Keres (1916–1975). It usually takes place in Vancouver, Canada and Tallinn, Estonia.

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 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.^[1]

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.^[2]

The Tallinn International has been held every other year from 1969 to 1989. It was named after Keres from 1977.^[3]

#	Year	Winner
1	1969	Leonid Stein
2	1971	Mikhail Tal Paul Keres
3	1973	Mikhail Tal
4	1975	Paul Keres
5	1977	Mikhail Tal
6	1979	Tigran Petrosian
7	1981	Mikhail Tal
8	1983	Mikhail Tal Rafael Vaganian
9	1985	Sergey Dolmatov
10	1987	Mikhail Gurevich
11	1989	Georgy Timoshenko Lembit Oll Jaan Ehlvest

From 1991 the Tallinn international has been replaced by an annual rapid tournament. From 1999, the tournament has had a separate women's section.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]}

#	Year	Winner	Women's section
1	1991	Anto Remmel
2	1992	Leonid Yudasin
3	1993	Jaan Ehlvest
4	1994	Viktor Korchnoi
5	1995	Lembit Oll
6	1996	Vassily Ivanchuk
7	1997	Viktor Gavrikov
8	1998	Suat Atalık Lembit Oll
9	1999	Viktor Gavrikov	Tatiana Stepovaia
10	2000	Vassily Ivanchuk	Tatiana Stepovaia
11	2001	Jan Timman	Viktorija Čmilytė
12	2002	Viktor Gavrikov	Dana Reizniece
13	2003	Alexander Morozevich	Pia Cramling
14	2004	Alexei Shirov	Maia Chiburdanidze
15	2005	Alexei Shirov	Ekaterina Kovalevskaya
16	2006	Vassily Ivanchuk Anatoly Karpov Rustam Kasimdzhanov	Ilze Bērziņa
18[16]	2008	Vladimir Malakhov	Ilze Bērziņa Viktorija Čmilytė
19	2009	Alexey Dreev Vasily Yemelin	Elisabeth Pähtz[17]
20	2011	Alexei Shirov
21	2012	Alexei Shirov
22	2013	Alexei Shirov
23	2014	Igor Kovalenko
24	2015	Sergei Tiviakov
25	2016	Igor Kovalenko

In the 1990s there have been several Keres memorials in Tallinn which were played at regular time control. These tournaments seem to have been held irregularly.^{[18][19][20][21]} At present there is an annual Keres Memorial Festival which started in 2004 with a special rapid tournament, where Viswanathan Anand emerged as a winner,^[22] 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.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]}

Year	Winner
2004	Kaido Külaots Artem Smirnov
2005	Meelis Kanep
2006	Mikhail Rytshagov
2007	Georgy Timoshenko
2008	Vasily Yemelin
2010	Olav Sepp[31]
2014	Alexandre Danin[32]

The tournament in Vancouver has been played ever since Keres won it in 1975. It was Keres' final tournament, as he died shortly thereafter.^[33][34]