Svetozar Gligorić

Svetozar Gligorić, 1966
Association	Yugoslavia
Born	February 2, 1923 Belgrade , Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Died	August 14, 2012 Belgrade
title	International Master (1950) Grand Master (1951)
Best Elo rating	2600 (July 1971)

Svetozar Gligorić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Светозар Глигорић ; born February 2, 1923 in Belgrade ; † August 14, 2012 there ) was a Yugoslav , later Serbian, chess player .

For three decades (approx. 1945 to 1975) he was considered to be the undisputed best player in Yugoslavia and was consistently among the best in the world in the 1950s and 1960s.

Life

Before and during World War II

Svetozar Gligorić, who was a trained journalist, learned chess as an eleven-year-old half-orphan (his father died when Gligorić was nine years old) and developed a great talent as a teenager. In 1937 and 1938 he was the youth champion of Belgrade. In 1939 he won the adult championship of his Belgrade club, and his photo was in the local press at the time.

The beginning of the Second World War stopped its further development. Gligorić repeated his success in Belgrade in 1940 and 1941, but after his mother (37 years old) died in 1940, he joined the partisans and did not touch a pawn until 1945.

The chess star of Yugoslavia

In 1945, immediately after the end of the war, the young man's meteoric rise began. That year he won (out of competition) the Bulgarian championship in Sofia and won (two points ahead) at the turn of 1945/46 the freedom tournament in Ljubljana , ahead of the archmasters of Yugoslavia, Milan Vidmar and Vasja Pirc . At the Yugoslav national championships this year and the next (1946), he had to let Petar Trifunović go first and came second. But in 1947 he became national champion and won a strong international tournament in Warsaw , unbeaten with 8 out of 9 and two full points ahead of the Soviet master players Isaak Boleslawski and Vasily Smyslow , as well as Ludek Pachman and Jaroslav Sajtar in shared second place.

Svetozar Gligorić - Ludek Pachman at the European team championship in Oberhausen 1961

Gligorić was awarded the title of Grand Master in 1951 . He was one of the most enthusiastic chess masters of his time. He was champion of Yugoslavia a total of eleven times, except in 1947 in 1948 (divided), 1949, 1950, 1956, 1957, 1958 (divided), 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1965. In his youth he played tournament games against chess legends such as Savielly Tartakower and Ossip Bernstein , Ernst Grünfeld , Friedrich Sämisch or Efim Bogoljubow . The aging champions were usually left behind against Gligorić.

He played in Interzonal of Saltsjöbaden in 1948 and reached the 11-13th Space. He succeeded several times in qualifying for the candidates tournament. In the 1953 candidates 'tournament in Zurich / Neuhausen he was 13th. His best sporting result was achieved at the candidates' tournament in his native Yugoslavia in 1959, when he shared 5th and 6th place.

In November 1958 he was according to the subsequently calculated historical Elo number of 2743 in 6th place in the world rankings.

These successes made him one of the most important sports personalities in his country. 1958 he was elected in the sports daily Sport on national athlete of the year ; Igor Miladinović was the only other chess player to do so in 1993 .

Late replacement by the younger ones

Once again in 1967 (through a shared 2nd – 4th place at the Sousse interzonal tournament ) Gligorić managed to qualify for the (newly introduced) candidate fights. However, he lost to former world champion Michail Tal in the quarterfinals with 3.5: 5.5 (+1 = 5 −3). In autumn 1971 in Berlin he won the International German Championship ahead of Jan Hein Donner and Heikki Westerinen .

The charismatic grandmaster, welcomed at international tournaments, no longer played for the top ranks in the world, but he defended his reputation as the best Yugoslav player until the young guard around Ljubomir Ljubojević appeared in the early 1970s. In the world rankings, the younger man managed to overtake Gligorić earlier, but he was only able to demonstrate it in a competition in Belgrade in 1979: Gligorić was just beaten by 4.5: 5.5 (+3 = 3 −4).

Gligorić played a number of competitions with famous masters in his career: in 1949 he defeated the Swedish chess legend Gideon Ståhlberg (in Split and Belgrade with 6.5: 5.5 (+2 = 9 −1)). He lost to Samuel Reshevsky in New York City in 1952 with 4.5: 5.5 (+1 = 7 −2) and defeated Jan Hein Donner in Eersel in 1968 with 6.5: 3.5 (+3 = 7 −0).

He is a record international player. He played between 1950 and 1982 at fifteen Chess Olympiads for the Yugoslav team and scored a total of 142.5 points from 223 games. In 1958 in Munich he received a gold medal for his result on the top board (+9 = 6 −0), in 1950 in Dubrovnik he won with the Yugoslav national team. Gligorić also participated with Yugoslavia from 1957 to 1983 in all eight European team championships . He achieved second place with the team five times, he won the individual ranking in Bath on the first board in 1973 , in Hamburg in 1965 , in Skara in 1980 and in Plovdiv in 1983 on the second board. In the competition between the USSR and the rest of the world in 1970 he was placed on the fifth board of the world selection and was defeated by Efim Geller with 1.5: 2.5.

Gligorić had been good friends with Bobby Fischer since 1958 . Before his comeback in 1992, Fischer played a training match against Gligorić, but the parties agreed not to disclose the results.

Svetozar Gligorić last played an international tournament at the Rilton Cup in Stockholm at the turn of the year 2003/04. He began taking harmony lessons at the age of 81 and has been composing popular music ever since. After releasing one album, he worked on a second in 2012.

Gligorić died of a stroke on August 14, 2012 at the age of 89 and was buried two days later in the Aleja velikana on Novo Groblje in his hometown of Belgrade.

The author

Gligorić wrote a large number of chess books that have also been translated into other languages. This includes a collection of his own games with the title I play against pieces (2002, ISBN 0-7134-8770-4 , original title Igram protiv figura ) and a book about the world championship match in 1972 ( Fischer - Spasskij: Schachmatch des Jahrhundert. ISBN 3- 85886-021-2 ). In addition, several books on openings , e.g. B. The French defense (1975, ISBN 0-89058-010-3 ), Play the Nimzo-Indian defense (1985, ISBN 0-08-026928-1 ) and The King's Indian defense, Mar del Plata variation (2002, ISBN 0-7134-8767-4 ). For decades, Gligorić was considered to be one of the greatest King's Indian experts. He was also interested in Fischer random chess and wrote the book Shall we play Fischerandom chess? (2002, ISBN 0-7134-8764-X ).

The theorist

The Gligorić system in the King's Indian Defense is named after him: 1. d2 – d4 Ng8 – f6 2. c2 – c4 g7 – g6 3. Nb1 – c3 Bf8 – g7 4. e2 – e4 d7 – d6 5. Ng1 – f3 0–0 6. Bf1 – e2 e7 – e5 7. Bc1 – e3 . It was used at the highest level of play by Anatoly Karpov in his 1990 world championship match against Garry Kasparov three times (3rd, 11th and 19th game).
A variant of the under the ECO codes C69 -run defrost version of the Spanish game also bears his name: 1. e2-e4 e7-e5 2. g1-f3 Nb8-c6 3. L f1-b5 a7-a6 4. Lb5xc6 d7xc6 5. 0 -0 f7-f6.

Game example

Petrosjan - Gligorić

	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

Position after 14. g3

One of Gligorić's best-known games is his black win against ex-world champion Tigran Petrosjan at the 1970 Zagreb tournament. On move 14, he made a courageous figure sacrifice , which in the subsequent analysis turned out to be incorrect, from the defensive player known Petrosian could not be refuted on the board.

Petrosjan - Gligorić 0-1

Zagreb, April 16, 1970

King's Indian Defense , ECO code E97

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Be2 0–0 6. Nf3 e5 7. 0–0 Nc6 8. d5 Ne7 9. b4 Nh5 10. Nd2 Nf4 11. a4 f5 12. Bf3 g5 13. exf5 Nxf5 14. g3 Diagram Nd4 15. gxf4 Nxf3 + 16. Qxf3 would have been better Nxf3 16.… g4 17. Qh1 exf4 18. Bb2 Bf5 19.Rfe1 f3 20.Nde4 Qh4 21. h3 Be5 22. Re3 gxh3 23. Qxf3 Bg4 24. Qh1 h2 + 25. Kg2 Qh5 26. Nd2 Bd4 27. De1 Tae8 28. Nce4 Bxb2 29.Rg3 Be5 30. Taa3 Kh8 31. Kh1 Rg8 32. Qf1 Bxg3 33.Rxg3 Rxe4 0: 1

Discography

• Kako sam preživeo dvadeseti vek (2011)

Publications

• The King's Indian Defense . Mar del Plata variation. Batsford , London 2002, ISBN 0-7134-8767-4 (English).

literature

• David Levy : Gligoric's best games 1945–1970 . RHM Press, New York 1972, ISBN 0-89058-015-4 .

Web links

Commons : Svetozar Gligorić  - collection of images

• Literature by and about Svetozar Gligorić in the catalog of the German National Library
• Replayable chess games by Svetozar Gligorić on chessgames.com (English)
• Picture gallery at Edward Winters Chess Notes
• "Pricao mi Gliga ..." . Memories by Vlastimil Hort , Chessbase.com, April 11, 2019

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Willy Iclicki: FIDE Golden book 1924-2002. Euroadria, Slovenia, 2002, p. 74.
2. ↑ Chessmetrics player profile , accessed August 15, 2012.
3. ↑ 52nd German individual chess championship 1971 in Berlin on TeleSchach (cross table and games)
4. ↑ Svetozar Gligorić's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
5. ↑ Svetozar Gligorić's results at European Team Championships on olimpbase.org (English)
6. ↑ Analyzing by the riverside with Bobby Fischer , June 23, 2010.
7. ↑ Умро Светозар Глигорић ( Memento of 17 September 2012 at the Internet Archive ), politika.rs 14 August 2012 found.
8. ↑ ChessBase: Svetozar Gligoric 1923–2012 . August 15, 2012. Retrieved August 20, 2012.
9. ↑ See analysis by Lubomir Kavalek (English)