Raymond Keene

Raymond Keene
Raymond Keene in 1985
Full name	Raymond Dennis Keene
Country	England
Born	(1948-01-29) 29 January 1948 (age 69)
Title	Grandmaster (1976)
FIDE rating	Not active
Peak rating	2510 (January 1977)

Raymond Dennis Keene OBE (born 29 January 1948) is an English chess Grandmaster, a FIDE International Arbiter, a chess organiser, and a journalist and author.^p196 He won the British Chess Championship in 1971, and was the first player from England to earn a Grandmaster norm, in 1974. In 1976 he became the second Englishman, following Tony Miles, to be awarded the Grandmaster title. He represented his country in eight Chess Olympiads.

Keene retired from competitive play in 1986 at the age of thirty eight, 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 has been chess correspondent of The Times since 1985, and is a prolific author, having written over 100 books on chess. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to chess in 1985.

Keene is a controversial figure in the chess world, and has had disputes with John Donaldson, Tony Miles, David Levy, and Viktor Korchnoi. He has been accused of plagiarism, and his business dealings and the quality of some of his chess books have also been criticised.

Keene won the London and British Under 18 Championships in 1964, and represented England at the 1965 and 1967 World Junior Chess Championships, held in Barcelona and Jerusalem respectively. After education at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he studied modern languages and graduated 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.