Kemeri 1937

◇A resort on the Baltic

Ķemeri was a fashionable Latvian spa resort near Riga, famous for its sulphur springs, and in the summer of 1937 it hosted one of the era's great international fields. Eighteen players took part in a single round-robin: alongside the eventual co-champions came former World Champion Alexander Alekhine — then preparing for the return match against Max Euwe that would win back his title that December — together with Paul Keres, Reuben Fine, Savielly Tartakower, Gideon Ståhlberg and a strong Baltic contingent.

The tournament left a grim footnote in chess journalism: the veteran master Jacques Mieses, covering the event as a newspaper correspondent, was struck by a bus in Ķemeri on 5 July 1937 and left with a permanent limp.

◇Three cannot be parted

At the finish, Flohr, Petrovs and Reshevsky stood level on 12 points from 17 games, and no tie-break was used to separate them — all three were declared joint winners. Alekhine and Keres shared fourth and fifth a half-point back on 11½. Flohr's run was the most solid of the three: he went through the whole event unbeaten. For Petrovs, matching two of the world's finest on home Latvian soil was the peak of a career then rising toward the very top.

The result confirmed Ķemeri as a high-water mark of pre-war international chess, and one of Reshevsky's and Flohr's finest continental performances of the decade.

◇Remembering Vladimirs Petrovs

Of the three co-winners, Petrovs had the saddest fate. One of the world's leading players in the late 1930s, the Latvian was later arrested by Soviet authorities and died in a labor camp near Kotlas in 1943. His share of first place at Ķemeri, won in front of his own countrymen, is still remembered in Latvian chess.