The XI. Chess Olympiad was played in Amsterdam, from September 4 to September 25. After Dubrovnik in 1950 and Helsinki in 1952, it was the third Chess Olympiad after the war and the second post-war Olympiad in which the Soviet Union participated. In Dubrovnik, the Soviets had renounced possible Olympic glory, but in Helsinki in 1952 they took part and won their first gold medal. This was also the start of a new era, and until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Soviet teams won gold in all but one of the following Olympiads in which they started – only in Buenos Aires 1978 they finished second behind Hungary.
In Amsterdam Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov, David Bronstein, Paul Keres, Efim Geller and Alexander Kotov were part of the Soviet team, and they won smoothly. In the finals they won ten of their eleven matches and drew only against Hungary. But at that time board- and not team-points counted. Here, the six Soviet players scored 34 out of a possible 44 points, 7 more than the second-placed Argentines.
The entire team had an impressive performance, but the most successful player was Keres on board four: he scored 13½/14 and only drew against Zandor Nilsson from Sweden.
In his book "The Quest for Perfection" Keres writes about this achievement in his usual sober fashion, but also with a touch of euphoria:
"At the beginning of the Chess Olympiad in Amsterdam I once again found myself in good form. In this event I played without any sort of tension and without getting into time-trouble, in a style that was at once simple and clear. Everything worked together wonderfully, one win came after another and the end result was that [...] I achieved the absolutely best total of the Olympiad." (Paul Keres, The Quest for Perfection, Batsford 1997, p. 57).
He then presents two short, nice attacking wins – and both show the ease and the power with which Keres played in Amsterdam.
For all Keres fans:
The current ChessBase Magazine #199 includes an extensive chess portrait of the Estonian Grandmaster.
