100th Birthday of Paul Keres

A portrait of the celebrated Estonian chess grandmaster Paul Keres, accompanied by several chess pieces. The inscription "PAUL KERES" arcs across the upper left. On the left side appear the issuing country "EESTI" and the year of issue "2016" below it. The twelve stars of the European flag are visible on the outer ring. Notably, the chess pieces in the lower left of the portrait form a graphic ambigram — they can be read from either direction.

Paul Keres was born on 7 January 1916 in Narva, Estonia, and is still regarded today as one of the most significant chess players of the 20th century. In the 1930s and 1940s, he ranked among the absolute world elite: at four Candidates tournaments, he narrowly missed the world championship title each time, earning him the chess world's nickname "the Eternal Second." Yet Keres was no mere tournament player — he developed his own opening systems, including the Keres Attack in the Sicilian Defence named after him, and left behind a theoretically rich legacy that chess theorists still study today. In Estonia he is revered as a national hero; his portrait graced the Estonian five-kroon banknote for years.

Keres's life was inseparably tied to the political upheavals of his time. When Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, he faced the question of under which flag he would continue to play chess — a decision that, in hindsight, brought him both criticism and understanding. Despite these burdens, he remained internationally active and represented the USSR at chess Olympiads without denying his Estonian identity. He died in 1975 on the return flight from a tournament in Canada. To mark Paul Keres's 100th birthday, Estonia issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2016 recalling his work as a chess genius and cultural icon of the country.