Josef Rejfiř (22 September 1909 – 4 May 1962) was one of Czechoslovakia's strongest

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

players before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Rejfiř represented Czechoslovakia at all five

Chess Olympiad The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams representing nations of the world compete. FIDE organises the tournament and selects the host nation. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, FIDE held an Online Chess Olympiad in 2020 and ...

s from 1928 to 1935. He retired from chess for many years, but returned in the last decade of his life to play in the 1956 and 1958 Olympiads. Rejfiř received the

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combinatio ...

title in 1956. He died of a heart attack in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, the city of his birth.

References

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External links

* 1909 births 1962 deaths Czech chess players Chess International Masters Chess Olympiad competitors 20th-century chess players {{czechRepublic-chess-bio-stub