Biography
While Torre was Mexican by birth and citizenship, he spent much of his early life in New Orleans and developed as a young player under the tutelage of the New Orleans player E. Z. Adams.
Torre first came to international attention when he attended the great New York 1924 tournament—not the event won by Kupchik—and impressed both the American and European Grandmasters with the high quality of his speed chess and analytical ability. The website Chessmetrics.com places Torre as eighth in the world following his tour of Europe. He was awarded the Grandmaster title in 1977.
Torre's career was cut short by mental illness. Torre spent much if not the remainder of his life hospitalized following his breakdown in 1926. A coming marriage that was broken by a Dear John letter is believed to have played a role in his breakdown per The Oxford Companion to Chess. However, as of 2012 the chess historian Edward Winter regards this as an open question. Reuben Fine visited him many years later and found that he still played very well. Torre's meteoric rise and psychological disintegration at a young age strikingly recall fellow New Orleans chess player Paul Morphy.
Read more about this topic: Carlos Torre Repetto
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