Education
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 Herbert Heinicke.
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 Herbert Heinicke.
In 1945, just after World World War II ended, Sarapu was invited to stay with a family friend in Denmark. 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 defeated former world chess championship candidate Efim Bogoljubov with a sharp turnaround from a bad position.
Immediately thereafter, the newlyweds emigrated to, arriving in Wellington in October 1950. They had one son, Peter.
On arrival, there was a huge gap in chess strength between him and the rest. His strength helped raise the general standard of chess in Sarapu claimed that this was a world record number of wins of any national championship.
He became known as "Mr New Zealand Chess", and represented the country at ten Chess Olympiads.
The match, played at Auckland, was drawn, the players becoming joint champions for 1952. Sarapu took first place at the Melbourne International Tournament in 1955.
FIDE awarded Sarapu the International Master title in 1966 after he won the Asian Zonal, making him the second player to gain the IM title, the first being Robert G Wade. In addition to Bogolyubov, other world-class players whom Sarapu played include World Champions Bobby Fischer (a loss at the Sousse 1967 Interzonal), Garry Kasparov (a loss at the Lucerne 1982 Olympiad), and Boris Spassky (a draw at Wellington 1988), and perennial World Championship candidate Viktor Korchnoi (a draw at the Sousse Interzonal). Sarapu was awarded an Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire for his services to chess.
