Early Life
Born Ortvin Sarapuu in Estonia, he won the Estonian Junior Championship in 1940, then defected to Finland from Nazi-occupied Estonia in 1943, then to Sweden. In 1945, just after World War II ended, Sarapu was invited to stay with a family friend in Denmark. In 1946, he won the Copenhagen championship and the Copenhagen five-minute lightning chess championship. In 1948, he played twenty games of blindfold chess simultaneously in Denmark.
His first and last international tournament in Europe was at Oldenburg 1949. There, he beat former world chess championship candidate Efim Bogolyubov with a sharp turnaround from a bad position. Sarapu finished in fifth place with 11-6, a point behind tournament winners Bogolyubov and Elmārs Zemgalis, and a half point behind Nicolas Rossolimo and H. Heinicke.
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