Eugenio Torre was born in Iloilo City, the Philippines and is the strongest Filipino chess player of his generation. He reached a peak world ranking of 20 in January 1983 and was in the world's top 100 players for most of the period from 1975 until 1992. (1) At the age of 60, he remains ranked among the top players in the Philippines.
Awarded the IM title in 1972, Torre quickly ascended the ranks, and has the distinction of being the first Asian to earn the title of International Grandmaster. He accomplished the feat at the age of 22 when he won a bronze medal on board 1 at the 21st World Chess Olympiad held in Nice, France in 1974. Torre has been a veteran of the World Chess Olympiad for four decades, playing in every Olympiad since 1970 (except for 2008), playing top board for his team in every Olympiad between 1972 and 2004 inclusive, and leading the Philippine team to 7th place at the 1988 Thessaloniki Olympiad. Altogether, he has won three individual Olympiad bronze medals. Torre also participated in most of the early Asian Team Championships, invariably playing top board and invariably winning one or two medals. He lead the team to three consecutive gold medals during the games held in 1977, 1979 and 1981, to silver in 1983, and gold again in 1986. He also won 4 consecutive individual gold medals in those years and finished with a bronze medal for both the team and himself in his last stint at the Asian Team Championships, played in Kuala Lumpur in 1993.
He beat Anatoly Karpov in Manila in 1976, one of Karpov's few losses during his championship reign. Torre qualified for the Candidates round in 1984 but lost to Zoltan Ribli. He was a friend of Robert James Fischer, playing some training games with him and acting as a member of his team during Fischer's 1992 match against Boris Spassky. Later he conducted radio interviews with Fischer on <Bombo Radyo> of the Philippines. He also established the Eugene Torre Chess Foundation and the Eugene Torre Chess Center, which aim to discover and develop hidden talents from the Philippines' provinces. He was an early coach of
Wesley So.
Philippines top 100 http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtm...; (1) http://www.schachchronik.de/ratings...; (2) http://philboxing.com/news/story-84...
Wikipedia article: Eugenio Torre
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