Eugenio Torre vs Wesley So, Slav Defense, D15, Chameleon Variation
Battle of Grandmasters, Dapitan City, Phillipines, 2009.
This is the first video in the series about the great masters of the 20th century, and who better to start with than Eugenio Torre, the man who revolutionized Asian chess. Eugenio Torre was born in the Philippines in 1951. He was a promising young player and in 1974. he became a grandmaster at the age of 22 (which was very early for those days). He was the first Asian grandmaster in history!
He had a remarkable career. He played on the Olympiad 18 times, he won games against chess legends such as Anatoly Karpov (their masterpiece game from 1976. Manilla tournament will be covered soon), and he was at the very top of world chess, despite being from a chess-wise very undeveloped background.
He was one of the rare people who was friends with Bobby Fischer, and in 1992., he was his second in the match against Spassky held in Serbia (which Bobby won convincingly). His peak rating was 2580 FIDE, which might seem low according to today’s standards, but at the time it was a very high rating.
He began a long process of implementing chess into everyday life in the Philippines which made it possible for him to play the game I covered today. His opponent was Wesley So, the second legend of Philippine chess, and one of the strongest players in the world.
Wesley was 15 at the time, but he was already a very strong player (much stronger than Eugenio). They played a very instructive Slav Defense, Chameleon Variation.