Ilmar Raud. A Chess Tragedy. Not Forgotten. Part Two. Games, Words and Pictures.

Another 'Just a draw'.

Päewaleht, nr. 7, 7 jaanuar 1939.

''Ilmar Raud is the first Estonian chess player.

 Went into the (last round of the) tournament with a 1.5 point lead. The match in Keres—Raud in the near future.  The Buenos Aires team has been revealed

On Friday evening, the 2-week Estonian championships in chess ended. The winner of the tournament was Ilmar Raud from Viljandi, who was the best chess player in the country, who scored 14 possible points and did not lose a single game. With this victory, Raud became the new number one Estonian chess player (on two previous occasions it was the German Paul Schmidt) and he has the right to challenge grandmaster Paul Kerest to an 8-game match in the name of the Estonian champion. ...........
 The Estonian national team to be sent to the Tournament of Nations (Chess Olympics) held in Buenos-Aires this July will be formed based on the results of the just-completed first competitions: 1st board  Keres, 2nd board  Raud, 3rd board Schmidt, 4th board Friedemann and 5th board Turn. In the last two rounds played yesterday, the sporting tension was high, because Raud's victory was not completely certain. Yesterday brought many surprises. 
The first surprise was the victory of Remmelgas against the favorite Friedemann. Fridemann, who was undefeated in the tournament so far, got the first zero and lost the chance to catch Raud. Next, Turn surprised Schmidt. Schmidt lost his back(!? translation needed) due to inattention and after a long struggle had to accept the first zero and surrender to Turn, who with this unexpected victory shook off his competition Laurine. The losses of Friedemann and Schmidt secured the top spot for Raud, regardless of what Raud does in the final round. Laurine, who had better chances than Türn, lost to the penultimate man, Jõe from Tartu, and thus had to give up the idea of ​​going to Buenos Aires once and for all. 
Former Estonian chess champion Ilmar Raud is from Viljandi and is currently 26 years old. old. He is currently studying mathematics at the University of Tartu, and being the last year student, is hoping to graduate from university soon. Raud entered the national chess arena. In 1930, he entered the junior class in 1931. Estonian champion. Raud has already been once, namely in 1934. However. after a year he had to hand it over to Paul Keres.. Raud's playing style is purely positional. He does not like to make dubious combinations and useless attacks. .. . 
 As soon as Keres arrives back in Tartu from the Union, Raud plans to challenge him. Of course, the match will not go to the world champion candidate, but only to the title of Estonian champion. But if Raud puts up a tough fight, the match deserves international attention.''

This picture is undated in the source, but I suspect it might be from that championships.

Britbase has some Raud games from Margate - Keres was in the main tournament. This one is a little wild!

A quiet looking game effectively ended by one shot.

Lundin was a seriously good player. frankly, Raud just outplays him. Lundin got his revenge in the finals if I recall correctly.

A couple of his games from the terrible times which followed. I will give his last significant victory first.

The following article ends with the game which I will give last.

April 2, 1929. The city chess competition of Pärnu and Viljandi. On the third table, the thirteen-year-old Paul Keres, who was even tiny for his age at the time, and the not much taller Ilmar Raud, who will turn sixteen in a few weeks, face each other. For Keres, it was the first time he played outside his hometown, Raud had already tested in the all-Estonian school youth tournament. Of course, both boys attracted the benevolent attention of their older fellow competitors, but hardly anyone could have guessed that the two future strongest Estonian chess players, who came to prominence during the bourgeois republic, would sit behind this table. Ilmar Raud was born on April 30, 1913 in Viljandi Kantreküla. He learned chess moves at the age of ten. Independently, inspired by the popular chess corner published in the magazine "Ronk". (Incidentally, Keres found out from the same source how the games are written.) At the Viljandi high school (1926-1931), he already found playing partners, he made it to the student youth championship in Narva at the turn of the year 1928/29, where he took third place. (The first was with 100% success in Vladas Mikena.) Ilmar Raud repeated this achievement the following spring. He did not manage to become the school youth champion, but his debut in the adult competition was all the more convincing. In the first class tournament (Tartu 1932), which is equivalent to the semi-finals of the modern championship, he won first place with 8.5 points out of 9! And in January 1934, Ilmar Raud was already crowned Estonian champion. 
Fom "Päevalehet": "Raud is a nice young man. He is very quiet and unassuming. When the tournament ended, he disappeared as quietly as he came." In my chess archive, there is Raud's own letter: "My games were generally all terrible knocks, and the luck was downright obscene in some places. / / Competitors had a bad time.» Self-criticism is so necessary for success! Right there, Raud had to admit to a reporter that he did not get any training before the tournament and "that's why he chose openings that are scientifically weak, but lead the opponent to overestimate his position". The young Keres behaved in the same way when he first stood up against the old men of that time. Such an emergency did not come from a good life. Keres still managed to break through, his talent simply could not be spoiled. Of course, Ilmar Raua's ambitions were smaller, but they also remained unfulfilled. Character, everyday worries, but also time were suddenly cut off. After graduating from high school, Raud studied mathematics in Tartu, played as hard as he could in one and another tournament, was a constant member of the Estonian Olympic team, and proposed reforms in chess life with stubborn persistence. As a person, he was still "very quiet and modest", with his small peculiarities, he gave reason for moving anecdotes among chess players. On the occasion of the 1937 Pärnu tournament, "Uus Eesti" wrote: " Raud... has many features in common with the university lecturer and mystical poet Hugo Masing (Uku Masing). Look at how he sits, thin and small, with his head in his hands, his head tangled in thought
sometimes, as if the worries and thoughts of all humanity were there to bear and suffer." The year 1939 started promisingly. Ilmar Raud won the Estonian championships (due to the absence of Keres, they were no longer called championships), entered the international individual tournament for the first time (Margate 1939), traveled to Buenos Aires in the summer to forge a sensational Olympic bronze together with others. Life seemed to be just beginning. The Second World War had broken out there. Raud was the only one from the Estonian team who did not risk returning. Strange environment, empty pocket of money... On July 13, 1941, Ilmar Raud died. After the Chess Olympiad, he still managed to play in a few more tournaments in Argentina. Fourth place came in Mar del Plata (October 1940). That's probably where Raud's best game comes from, a roaring victory over the Lithuanian Luckis. 

Some pictures which i did not manage to fit in as  went along. I used it for the header picture.

So that is the end of my humble tribute to the very first of 'the forgotten' who I ever came across.

Had life permitted I would have made a much better job of it, and I am ashamed of that fact, but hopefully a few more will know who he was, and feel sad at the tragedy which I feel so deeply writing all this.
R.I.P. 'The Iron' You are not forgotten whilst I am alive.