Arturo Pomar Salamanca

Arturo Pomar Salamanca, 1972
Association	Spain
Born	September 1, 1931 Palma de Mallorca
Died	May 26, 2016 Barcelona
title	International Master (1950) Grand Master (1962)
Best Elo rating	2510 (July 1971)

Arturo Pomar Salamanca (born September 1, 1931 in Palma de Mallorca , † May 26, 2016 in Barcelona ) was a Spanish chess master .

Life

Arturo Pomar learned the rules of chess at the age of five and won the adult championship of the Balearic Islands as a ten-year-old , but was not allowed to qualify for the national championship because of his young age. A year later he repeated his success in the Balearic Islands, finished third in the qualifying tournament and was allowed to participate in the final of the Spanish championship in 1942. Pomar was then considered a child prodigy in Spain and he was shown to the public in films and radio broadcasts. The then world champion Alexander Alekhine , who was in Portugal and Spain at the end of the Second World War , became aware of Pomar and gave him lessons for a long time. In 1944, Pomar played a draw against Alekhine at a tournament in Gijón , which is a record to date: no younger player (Pomar was 13 years old) has been able to draw in a tournament match against a reigning world champion. In 1946, Pomar defeated the chess legend Jacques Mieses (then 81 years old) in London in a short competition with 1.5: 0.5.

Arturo Pomar (Baarn, 1947)

Pomar won the Spanish championship seven times (1946, 1950, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1962 and 1966) and represented the Spanish national team at all twelve Chess Olympiads from 1958 to 1980 . At the Chess Olympiad in Leipzig in 1960 he achieved the third-best individual result on the second board. He also took part with Spain in the 1970 European Team Championship in Kapfenberg . He became international champion in 1950 , and at the age of 18 he was the youngest of the almost 100 honored players. 1962 awarded him FIDE the Grandmaster title . His most significant successes at international tournaments include: 1. – 2. Place in Paris 1949, second in Hollywood 1952, 1st – 4th place. in Madrid ( zone tournament ) 1960, first in Torremolinos in 1961, first in Malaga in 1964, second in Palma in 1966 and first in Malaga in 1971. Pomar qualified at the zone tournament in Madrid in 1960 for the interzonal tournament in Stockholm in 1962, where he tied for 11th place.

In the Spanish team championship , Pomar played for the Real Madrid team until 1963, with whom he became champions in 1957 , 1959 , 1961 and 1962 , then until 1969 for the team of CE Barcelona, ​​with which he won the championship in 1964 , and from 1973 to 1983 for the team of UGA Barcelona, ​​with whom he became Spanish team champion in 1979 .

At the age of 61, he finally retired from tournament chess in 1992, after having only played sporadic tournament games for several years.

Before the Elo rating was introduced , Pomar's highest historical rating was 2655 in March 1962.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Arturo Pomar's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
2. ↑ Arturo Pomars results at the European Team Championships on olimpbase.org (English)
3. ^ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 75.
4. ↑ Arturo Pomar's results at Spanish team championships on olimpbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Arturo Pomar Salamanca's historical Elo numbers on chessmetrics.com (English)

Web links

• Re-playable chess games by Arturo Pomar Salamanca on chessgames.com