Milan Matulović

Matulović (Hoogovens, 1974)

Milan Matulović ( Serbian - Cyrillic Милан Матуловић ; born June 10, 1935 in Belgrade ; † October 8, 2013 ibid) was a Yugoslav , later Serbian, chess player .

Milan Matulović played from 20 to 26 July 1958 in Belgrade a four-game match against Bobby Fischer , whom he lost with 1.5: 2.5. In 1961 he became International Master , in 1965 Grand Master . In 1965 and 1967 he was national champion of Yugoslavia. The most successful year of his career was 1969 when he won international tournaments in Skopje , Athens and Belgrade. He was then appointed to the world selection for the competition between the USSR and the rest of the world in 1970. There he lost on board 8 against former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik with 1.5: 2.5.

For Yugoslavia he played at all five Chess Olympiads from 1964 in Tel Aviv to 1972 in Skopje . He scored 60 points from 78 games (46 wins, 4 losses, 28 draws). There were silver medals for the team in Lugano in 1964 and 1968 . In 1964 he was the second reserve player to win gold in the board classification. He also took on the European team championship in chess in 1961 in Oberhausen and 1973 in Bath at all four European Team Championships in part. He reached 17 points from 32 games (10 wins, 8 losses, 14 draws). He won silver three times with the team.

With Partizan Belgrade , he took part in the European Club Cup seven times between 1976 and 1996 and reached the quarter-finals six times.

He played in two interzonal tournaments , 1967 in Sousse and 1970 in Palma . In both tournaments he made negative headlines: In Sousse he took back a false move in his game against István Bilek , which earned him the nickname Jadoubovic . In Palma, he lost his game in the last round against Mark Taimanow , who absolutely needed a win to qualify for the Candidates Tournament , under suspicious circumstances. According to the tournament book, Matulović, contrary to his usual habit, hardly needed any time to think about it and made a completely disinterested impression during the game, which he lost almost without resistance. A fraud though could be proven never, but his reputation was ruined after this incident. Unsportsmanlike incidents also occurred in later tournaments. At the senior chess championship in 1995, according to the Dutch grandmaster Hans Ree, he manipulated the chess clock in an actually meaningless game in order to avoid a loss by exceeding the time limit.

Matulović was considered an uncompromising attacking player and was one of the leading experts on the Morra Gambit .

His last Elo rating was 2394, but at this point he was already listed as inactive, as he did not play a rated game after the 2007 Serbian team championship. He achieved his best Elo rating of 2530 in July 1971 and May 1974. Before the introduction of the Elo numbers, his best historical Elo rating was 2676, which puts him in 20th place in the world rankings in December 1967.

Milan Matulović - István Bilek
interzonal tournament in Sousse 1967

	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H
8th									8th
7th									7th
6th									6th
5									5
4th									4th
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	G	H

White to move

Matulović played 38.Be2 – f3, but replaced the move with 38. Kf1 – g1

Web links

• Replayable chess games by Milan Matulović on chessgames.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002 . Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 75
2. ↑ Milan Matulović results at Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English) (English)
3. ↑ Milan Matulović results at European Team Championships on olimpbase.org (English)
4. ↑ Milan Matulović's results at European Club Cups on olimpbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Game against István Bilek for replay
6. ^ Reinhold Hoffmann: 5th World Championship for Seniors 1995 Bad Liebenzell and 1st accompanying Open . ChessOrg-Verlag, Völklingen
7. ↑ Elo history from 1990 on benoni.de
8. ↑ Elo history up to 2001 at olimpbase.org (English)
9. ↑ Milan Matulović's historical Elo numbers on chessmetrics.com (English)