Svetozar Gligorić (; 2 February 1923 – 14 August 2012) was a Serbian and Yugoslav chess grandmaster and musician. He won a record 11 titles at Yugoslav Chess Championship, a record 12 team medals at Chess Olympiad, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia and Yugoslavia. In 1958, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Gligorić was one of the top players in the world reaching the Candidates Tournament three times (1953, 1959, 1968). In his career he won both team (1950) and individual board 1 (1958) gold medals at the Chess Olympiad thus becoming one of the few players in chess history to do so (along with Kashdan, Rubinstein, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov, Korchnoi, Kasparov, Ivanchuk, Aronian, Ding, Gukesh and Abdusattorov).
He was also among the world's most popular players, owing to his globe-trotting tournament schedule and a particularly engaging personality, reflected in the title of his autobiography book, I Play Against Pieces (i.e., without hostility toward the opponent; playing "the board and not the man").
Early years Gligorić was born in Belgrade to a poor family. According to his recollections, his first exposure to chess was as a small child watching patrons play in a neighborhood bar. He began to play at the age of eleven, when taught by a boarder taken in by his mother (his father had died by this time). Lacking a chess set, he made one for himself by carving pieces from corks from wine bottles—a story paralleling the formative years of his contemporary, the renowned Estonian grandmaster Paul Keres.
Gligorić was a good student during his youth, with both academic and athletic successes that famously led to him to be invited to represent his school at a birthday celebration for Prince Peter, who later became King Peter II of Yugoslavia. He later recounted to International Master David Levy (who chronicled his chess career in The Chess of Gligoric) his distress at attending this gala event wearing poor clothing stemming from his family's impoverished condition. His first tournament success came in 1938 when he won the Belgrade Chess Club championship; however, World War II interrupted his chess progress for a time. During the war, Gligorić was a member of a partisan unit. A chance encounter with a chess-playing partisan officer led to his removal from combat. Following the death of his parents, he was adopted in 1940 at the age of 17 by Niko Miljanić.
Following World War II, Gligorić worked for several years as a journalist and organizer of chess tournaments eventually making the transition to full-time chess professional. He continued to progress as a player and in the year of introduction of FIDE titles (1950) he was awarded the International Master title. A year later, Gligorić became a Grandmaster, thus becoming the second Serb to receive this title, after Boris Kostić (1950).
Chess career
During the 1950s and 1960s, Gligorić was one of the world's strongest players, with a number of tournament victories to his credit, three participations in the Candidates tournaments and a record 11 Yugoslav chess championships in 1947 (joint), 1948 (joint), 1949, 1950, 1956, 1957, 1958 (joint), 1959, 1960, 1963 and 1966. Thanks to his personality, Gligorić became a lifelong friend of many well-known and skilled chess players such as Bobby Fischer, Tigran Petrosian, Efim Geller, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal and Miguel Najdorf.
He represented his native Yugoslavia with great success in fifteen Chess Olympiads between 1950 and 1982 (thirteen times on ). In the first post-World War II Olympiad, on home soil at Dubrovnik 1950, Gligorić played on board 1 and led Yugoslavia to a historic result, the team gold medal.
This was during a golden age of Serbian chess, a period when Yugoslavia (led by Serbian grandmasters like Gligorić, Ivkov, Trifunović, Matanović, Matulović, Ljubojević etc.) was among the top three chess countries in the world which led to Gligorić becoming the man with the most team medals in the history of the Chess Olympiad (12). His best individual result was the gold medal on board 1 at the 1958 Olympiad in Munich ahead of reigning world champion Mikhail Botvinnik and former world champion Max Euwe. With this medal Gligorić became one of only 13 players with both team and individual board 1 gold medals at Chess Olympiad.
On top of that, he was very successful at European championship as well winning 6 team medals and 5 board medals, including individual board 1 gold medal that he won in 1973 together with Boris Spassky.
His list of first-place finishes in international chess competitions is one of the longest and includes such events as Liberation Tournament 1945/46 (ahead of Milan Vidmar), Warsaw 1947 (ahead of Smyslov and Boleslavsky), Mar del Plata 1950 and 1953 (ahead of the entire silver medal winning Argentina 1952 Olympic team: Najdorf, Bolbochan, Eliskases, Pilnik and Rossetto), Stockholm 1954, Dallas 1957 (tied with Reshevsky, ahead of Szabo, Larsen and Najdorf), Belgrade 1962 (ahead of Ivkov) and 1969 (tied with Ivkov and Polugaevsky ahead of Geller and Botvinnik), Tel Aviv 1966, Manila 1968, Lone Pine (California) 1972 and 1979, Staunton Memorial 1951, Sarajevo 1962 (tied with Portisch), Los Angeles 1974 and many others. He was also a regular competitor in the series of great tournaments held at Hastings, with wins (or ties for first) in 1951–52, 1956–57, 1959–60, 1960–61 and 1962–63. His five wins and shared wins at Hastings remains a record for the event.
Some other notable results include second place in Buenos Aires 1955 (behind Ivkov, ahead of Pilnik and Szabo), Hastings 1957/58 (behind Paul Keres), Zurich 1959 (ahead of Keres and Fischer but ½ point behind Tal), Hastings 1961/62 (behind Botvinnik), Reykjavik 1964 (behind Tal), great tournament in Zagreb 1970 (ahead of Petrosian, tied with Smyslov, Korchnoi and Hort, behind Fischer), Vinkovci 1970 (behind Larsen, tied with Bronstein and Hort, ahead of Petrosian and Taimanov), and Wijk aan Zee 1971 (tied with Petrosian, behind Korchnoi). Gligorić was also third in Mar del Plata 1955, very strong Bled 1961 tournament (ahead of Geller and Najdorf, tied with Keres and Petrosian, behing Fischer and Tal) and Havana 1952 (behind Najdorf and Reshevsky), as well as fourth in Capablanca Memorial 1962 (tied with Smyslov, behind Najdorf, Spassky and Polugaevsky), Belgrade 1964 (behind Spassky, Korchnoi and Ivkov, ahead of Larsen, Matanović and Bronstein), San Antionio 1972 (ahead of Keres and Hort, behind Portisch, Karpov and Petrosian), Amsterdam 1950 (ahead of Pilnik, Euwe and Tartakower, tied with Pirc, behind Najdorf, Reshevsky and Stahlberg) and in the 1956 Alekhine Memorial Tournament held in Moscow. Sixteen leading grandmasters took part in this prestigious tournament, which made Gligorić's result even more valuable. The fact that Gligorić finished behind Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov and Mark Taimanov, but ahead of David Bronstein, Miguel Najdorf and Paul Keres lead Bronstein to claim that Gligorić was one of the top three players in the world at that moment.
His record in world championship qualifying events was mixed. He was a regular competitor in Zonal and Interzonal competitions with several successes, e.g. zonal wins in 1951, 1960 (joint), 1963, 1966, and 1969 (joint) and 8 participations in the interzonal tournaments between 1948 and 1973 with his best result coming in 1958 when he was 2nd, half a point behind the future world champion, Mikhail Tal. During this period, the Serbian grandmaster missed only one of these tournaments in 1955. Successful performances at interzonal level in 1952, 1958 and 1967 enabled him to participate in Candidates Tournaments the following years. He wasn't able to win any of those Candidates events, however, finishing 13th in the 1953, 5th in 1959 and with 3½–5½ loss against Mikhail Tal in the quarterfinals of the 1968 Candidates match series.
Two years later, in 1970, Gligorić participated in one of the greatest chess events of all time, The Match of the Century – USSR versus the Rest of the World. That year, Belgrade gathered literally all the best players in the world from both sides of the Iron Curtain, among them Gligorić, who played on the fifth board for Team World. The Soviets, more difficult than expected, confirmed their superiority with a score of 20½–19½.
In 1973 Gligorić won his fourth silver medal at the European team championship seasoned with his third individual European medal – the already mentioned gold on the first board together with Boris Spassky. A year later Gligorić won another silver at Chess Olympiad, his 12th and last Olympiad team medal, and even though he was 51 years old his career was not over.
In the following years, Gligorić will achieve notable results at the 1975 Yugoslav Chess Championship (2nd, tied with Ljubojević and Matanović, half a point behind Velimirović), 1975 Vidmar Memorial (2nd, behind Karpov, ahead of Hort, Ribli and Portisch), 1977 Torneo Del Vino (1st, ahead of Byrne, Taimanov and Andersson), 1978 Torneo Del Vino (2nd, tied with Hort, behind Spassky) and 1981 Lone Pine (2nd behind Korchnoi). Gligorić achieved an impressive result at the 1982 Yugoslav Championship when he finished in second place, half a point behind one of the best-ranked chess players in the world, Ljubomir Ljubojević. One of his last notable international appearances Gligorić had at the Chigorin Memorial in 1986, a tournament he won together with Beliavsky and Vaganian, ahead of Tal, Geller and Smyslov. Adding to the individual success are two more European medals with the national team (bronze in 1977 and silver in 1983) and two more individual golds on the second board (1980 and 1983).
Yugoslav chess championship results Gligorić made his first national top-level appearance in 1945 at the first post-war championship of Yugoslavia. In the following decades, Gligorić would win a record 11 titles. In total, he was among the top three players in the Yugoslav championship 18 times, which is an all time record.
1945: 16/23 (+14−5=4), 2nd place, champion Petar Trifunović 1946: 12/18 (+9−3=6), 2nd place, champion Petar Trifunović 1947: 12½/17 (+10−2=5), champion, shared with Petar Trifunović 1948: 12½/17 (+11−3=3), champion, shared with Vasja Pirc 1949: 14/19 (+9−0=10), champion 1950: 11½/17 (+6−0=11), champion 1951: 10½/19 (+5−3=11), 7th place, champion Braslav Rabar 1952: 12/19 (+8−3=8), 3rd place, shared with Borislav Milić and Mijo Udovčić, champion Petar Trifunović 1953: 10½/17 (+6−2=9), 4th place, shared with Borislav Milić and Dragoljub Janošević, champion Vasja Pirc 1955: 11/17 (+5−0=12), 2nd place, champion Nikola Karaklajić 1956: 14/19 (+9−0=10), champion 1957: 15½/22 (+9−0=13), champion 1958: 12½/19 (+7−1=11), champion, shared with Borislav Ivkov 1959: 11½/17 (+7−1=9), champion 1960: 13/17 (+9−0=8), champion 1963: 9½/13 (+7−1=5), champion 1965: 12/19 (+7−2=10), 2nd place, shared with Bruno Parma, champion Milan Matulović 1966: 12/18 (+8−2=8), champion 1975: 12/19 (+6−1=12), 2nd place, shared with Ljubomir Ljubojević and Aleksandar Matanović, champion Dragoljub Velimirović 1982: 11/17 (+7−2=8), 2nd place, champion Ljubomir Ljubojević 1984: 7½/16 (+3−4=9), 12th place, champion Predrag Nikolić 1986: 10/17 (+3−0=14), 6th place, champion Dragan Barlov 1990: 6½/15 (+2−4=9), 12th place, champion Zdenko Kožul 1991: 8½/13 (+6−2=5), 8–12 place, champion Branko Damljanović
World Chess Championship results
In the World Chess Championship cycles, Gligorić played in 8 Interzonal tournaments from 1948 to 1973 missing only one in 1955.
1948 Stockholm: 9½/19 (+5−5=9), tied 11th–13th place out of 20 1952 Stockholm: 12½/20 (+9−4=7), 8th place out of 21 1958 Portorož: 13/20 (+8−2=10), 2nd place out of 21 1962 Stockholm: 13½/22 (+7−2=13), 8th place out of 23 1964 Amsterdam: 14/23 (+9−4=10), 10th place out of 24