Raymond Dennis Keene (born 29 January 1948) is an English chess grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author. He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974, at the Nice Olympiad. In 1976, he became the second Englishman (following Tony Miles) to be awarded the Grandmaster title, and he was the second British chess player to beat an incumbent World Chess Champion (following Jonathan Penrose's defeat of Mikhail Tal in 1960). He represented England in eight Chess Olympiads.
Keene retired from competitive play in 1986 at the age of 38, and is now better known as a chess organiser, columnist and author. He was involved in organising the 1986, 1993 and 2000 World Chess Championships; and the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Mind Sports Olympiads, all held in London. He was the chess correspondent of The Times from 1985 to November 2019, and is a prolific author, having written over 200 books on chess and mind games. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to chess in the 1985 Birthday Honours.
Keene won the London and British Under 18 Championships (shared with Brian Denman) in 1964, and represented England at the 1965 and 1967 World Junior Chess Championships, held in Barcelona and Jerusalem respectively. At the latter event he took the silver medal, finishing behind Julio Kaplan. He was educated at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he studied modern languages and graduated with an MA). Keene wrote his first chess book whilst studying at Cambridge, and won the British Chess Championship at Blackpool 1971. As a result, he was awarded the International Master title in 1972, the first English player to achieve this since Jonathan Penrose in 1961. In 1974, Keene married Annette, the sister of International Master David S. Goodman. They have one son, Alexander, born in 1991.
Keene was the second British player to meet the necessary requirements to become a Grandmaster. He earned his second GM norm (thus becoming qualified for the title) at the 1976 Haifa Olympiad; but Tony Miles had scored his own second norm a few months earlier in 1976, thus becoming the first British Grandmaster. Both Keene and Miles won financial prizes for this feat.
Miles and Keene were at the forefront of the English chess explosion of the next 20 years, and they were followed by other British Grandmasters such as Michael Stean, John Nunn, Jon Speelman and Jonathan Mestel.
Keene represented England for nearly two decades in international team events, beginning with the 1966 Chess Olympiad in Havana when he was 18. He followed with the next seven straight Olympiads: Lugano 1968, Siegen 1970, Skopje 1972, Nice 1974, Haifa 1976, Buenos Aires 1978, and La Valletta 1980. His individual performances at Lugano and Haifa merited bronze medals (although individual medals were not, in fact, awarded at Haifa) and he was undefeated in three Olympiads – these two and Siegen. His later performances, though, were less impressive, with just two draws from four games at Buenos Aires and losses in both his games at La Valletta.
He represented England four times at the Students' Olympiad (Örebro 1966, Harrachov 1967, Ybbs 1968 and Dresden 1969) and four times at the European Team Championships (Bath 1973, Moscow 1977, Skara 1980 and Plovdiv 1983). At Skara he won both a bronze medal with the team and the individual gold medal for the best score on his board.
Keene won the 1971 British championship and shared second place on three occasions, in 1968, 1970 and 1972. His tournament victories include Hastings Challengers 1966, Slater Challenge Southend 1968, Johannesburg 1973, Woolacombe 1973, Capablanca Memorial (Master Group) 1974, Alicante 1977, Sydney 1979, Dortmund 1980, Barcelona 1980, Lloyds Bank Masters 1981, Adelaide 1983 and La Valletta 1985.
Keene's playing style tended toward the strategically original and positional. Strongly influenced by Aron Nimzowitsch and Richard Réti, he accordingly preferred hypermodern openings such as the Modern Defence, Nimzo-Indian Defence and King's Indian Defence.
Keene worked as a chess event organiser. He was the originator and organiser of the annual Staunton memorial chess tournaments, one of the few regular events for masters held in London. The Oxford Companion comments: "By a combination of ability and shrewdness, Keene has attracted considerable sponsorship and has proved himself capable of efficient and rapid organisation of chess events".p196
Keene brought Victor Korchnoi and Garry Kasparov together for their 1983 Candidates' semi-final match in London as part of the 1984 World Championship cycle; the semi-final match between Vasily Smyslov and Zoltán Ribli was also played at the same site. He organised the 1984 Russia (USSR) vs Rest of the World match in London within two weeks, enabling the event to go ahead on time after the previous plans had fallen through, described by John Nunn as "a magnificent organisational achievement at such short notice."
Keene has also been involved in organising several World Championship finals matches. He arranged for the first half of the World Chess Championship 1986 return match between Kasparov and Karpov in London. The match, however, made a loss for the British Chess Federation (BCF) and, for reasons never clarified, he resigned from his position in the BCF shortly afterwards. He organised the 1993 PCA World Championship match between Kasparov and Nigel Short in London, for which he was one of the official commentators along with Grandmasters Jonathan Speelman and Daniel King. He was the instrumental force behind 'Brain Games', which organized the World Championship match in 2000 between Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. Following the match, however, he retained the trophy in lieu of money he believed he was owed by the collapse of Brain Games: Kramnik did not receive it until 2008. Brain Games later collapsed in controversial circumstances.
Keene became the chess columnist of The Spectator in March 1977. His column was terminated in September 2019, when he was replaced by Luke McShane. Following the retirement of Harry Golombek, Keene was appointed the chess correspondent of The Times in 1985. In November 2019 he was replaced by David Howell. In December 1996 he became the chess columnist of the Sunday Times. In August 2017 he was replaced by David Howell.
Keene has appeared on television. He covered the world championships of 1981, 1985, 1986, 1990, 1993, and 1995 for BBC 2, Channel 4, and Thames TV. In the Duels of the Mind series which aired on the UK ITV network, Keene, along with South African author and civil rights campaigner Donald Woods, discussed and analysed what Keene regarded as the twelve best chess games ever played.
From 1978 to 1982, Keene was the editor of Modern Chess Theory, a magazine on openings which included contributions from the Soviet world champions Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, and Mikhail Tal.
Keene has written over 200 books on chess and mind games. He was for many years the Chess Advisor to Batsford Books. His early books such as Howard Staunton (1975, with R. N. Coles) often dealt with players with styles similar to his own. Aron Nimzowitsch: a Reappraisal (1974) is much admired and was revised and translated into Russian in 1986, with an algebraic edition published in English in 1999. In 1989, he and Nathan Divinsky wrote Warriors of the Mind, an attempt to determine the 64 best chess players of all time. The statistical methods used have not met with wide approval, but the player biographies and games were regarded by one book as providing a good overview.
In 1978, along with Michael Stean and Jacob Murey, Keene helped Viktor Korchnoi during the 1978 World Chess Championship Karpov–Korchnoi match.
In 1981, Keene came to the USSR and helped Anatoly Karpov prepare for the 1981 World Chess Championship Karpov–Korchnoi match.