Svetozar Gligorić


Svetozar Gligorić was a Serbian chess grandmaster and musician. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record 11 times, 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. In his career he won both team and individual board 1 gold medals at the Chess Olympiad thus becoming one of the few players in chess history to do so. 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.

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. 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 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 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.

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, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963 and 1966. Thanks to his engaging personality, Gligorić became a lifelong friend of many legendary players like 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. 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 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. 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, Warsaw 1947, Mar del Plata 1950 and 1953, Stockholm 1954, Dallas 1957, Belgrade 1962 and 1969, Tel Aviv 1966, Manila 1968, Lone Pine 1972 and 1979, Staunton Memorial 1951, Sarajevo 1962, Los Angeles 1974 and many others. He was also a regular competitor in the series of great tournaments held at Hastings, with wins 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, Hastings 1957/58, Zurich 1959, Hastings 1961/62, Reykjavik 1964, great tournament in Zagreb 1970, Vinkovci 1970, and Wijk aan Zee 1971. Gligorić was also third in Mar del Plata 1955, very strong Bled 1961 tournament and Havana 1952, as well as fourth in Capablanca Memorial 1962, Belgrade 1964, San Antionio 1972, Amsterdam 1950 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, 1963, 1966, and 1969 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, 1975 Vidmar Memorial, 1977 Torneo Del Vino, 1978 Torneo Del Vino and 1981 Lone Pine. 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 and two more individual golds on the second board.

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.

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.
Successful performances at interzonal level in 1952, 1958 and 1967 enabled him to participate in Candidates Tournaments the following years while narrowly missed the Candidates in 1962 and 1965.

National team results

Chess Olympiad

Between 1950 and 1982 Gligorić participated in 15 Chess Olympiads from which he brought 12 team medals with a personal score of 88 wins, 26 losses and 109 draws. As the leader of the golden generation of Serbian chess, Gligorić is the player with the most team medals in Olympiad history. His 13 total medals make him the second-most decorated Serbian and Yugoslav player of all time behind Borislav Ivkov and one of the 10 most decorated chess players in general, not far behind Kasparov, Tal, Keres, Petrosian and an all time record holder Vasily Smyslov.
On top of that, his individual board 1 gold medal from 1958 puts him in the elite company of players who have won both team and individual board 1 gold at Chess Olympiad.

European Team Chess Championship

In eight European team championships, Gligorić won 6 team and 5 individual medals with a personal score of +16−4=41. This makes him the player with the third most team medals and the fourth most individual medals in competition's history. His 11 total medals are fourth-most in history as well behind Geller, Portisch and Petrosian.
  • Vienna 1957: board 1, 3/6, team silver
  • Oberhausen 1961: board 1, 4/10, team silver
  • Hamburg 1965: board 2, 7/10, board gold, team silver
  • Kapfenberg 1970: board 1, 4/7, board bronze, team 4th
  • Bath 1973: board 1, 5/7, board gold, team silver
  • Moscow 1977: board 2, 3½/7, board 4th, team bronze
  • Skara 1980: board 2, 5½/7, board gold; team 4th
  • Plovdiv 1983: board 2, 4½/7, board gold, team silver

Lifetime scores against selected grandmasters

In his career, Gligorić defeated six reigning, former and future world champions, and his overall record against players of this caliber is 24 wins, 50 losses and 109 draws. His win against Fischer in the 1962 Olympiad and two wins against Petrosian while Petrosian was the World Champion stand out the most. One of those two wins was Petrosian's first defeat since he won the title against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963.
Gligorić had the following record against the world champions he played:
Selected lifetime results against other top grandmasters:

Rating and ranking

During his prime in the 1950s and 1960s, Gligorić was one the ten best players in the world. When the Elo rating system was introduced in the early 1970s, Gligorić had a rating of 2600. This placed him in the top 15 best players in the world when he was nearly 50 years old. In 1987, at the age of 64, Gligorić was among the top 100 for the last time in his career. His highest Historical Chessmetrics Rating was 2743, in November 1958.

Later years and death

In 1984 to 1985 he was the chief arbiter in the aborted marathon world title match between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov. Gligorić turned down FIDE's offer to keep the same position in the 1985 rematch. He continued active tournament play well into his sixties. In his last public chess event, he played board 1 for the Yugoslav team in the so-called "USSR vs. Yugoslavia" match in 2007. This match celebrated the USSR versus Yugoslavia matches that were held from the 1950s to the 1970s, in which Gligorić had represented the Yugoslav side 14 times.
During his life Gligorić was very interested in art and culture, but his greatest passion besides chess was music. So in his eighties, Gligorić turned to music, even releasing an album in Belgrade consisting of 12 compositions, mostly jazz, rap and blues.
On 14 August 2012, Gligorić died from a stroke at 89 years of age in Belgrade. He was buried on 16 August 2012, at 13:30 in the Alley of the Greats at Belgrade's New Cemetery.

Legacy

Although he compiled a superb tournament record, it is perhaps as an openings theorist and commentator that Gligorić will be best remembered. He made enormous contributions to the theory and practice of the King's Indian Defence, Ruy Lopez and Nimzo-Indian Defence, among others; and, particularly with the King's Indian, translated his theoretical contributions into several spectacular victories with both colours.
Theoretically significant variations in the King's Indian and Ruy Lopez are [List of chess openings List of chess openings named after people|named after people|named] after him, including some critical and very commonly played opening variations like the Gligorić Variation of King's Indian ; the Ruy Lopez Exchange, Gligorić Variation ; the Nimzo-Indian Gligorić System and the Ruy Lopez Closed Breyer, Gligorić Variation. His battles with Bobby Fischer in the King's Indian and Sicilian Defence often worked out in his favour.
Gligorić also invented the famous Mar del Plata Variation of the King's Indian Defence which he employed for the first time at the international tournament in Mar del Plata in 1953 against Najdorf and two rounds later against Eliskases, winning both games.
As a commentator, Gligorić was able to take advantage of his fluency in a number of languages and his training as a journalist, to produce lucid, interesting game annotations. He was a regular columnist for Chess Review and Chess Life magazines for many years, his "Game of the Month" column often amounting to a complete tutorial in the opening used in the feature game as well as a set of comprehensive game annotations. He wrote a number of chess books in several languages. One of the most notable was Fischer vs. Spassky: The Chess Match of the Century, a detailed account of their epic struggle for the world title in Reykjavík in 1972. He also contributed regularly to the Chess Informant semi-annual compilation of the world's most important chess games.
In 2019, FIDE established a fair play award named after Gligorić. The "Fair Play Svetozar Gligoric Trophy" is awarded annually by a three-member commission in recognition of sportsmanship, integrity and the promotion of ethical behavior within chess.
On September 23, 2020, the public company "Pošta Srbije" released a series of new postage stamps called: "Chess Giants of Serbia". In addition to Gligorić, Petar Trifunović, Boris Kostić, Milan Matulović and Milunka Lazarević were also given this honour. On that occasion, short biographies of the players depicted on these stamps were also published. The texts are given in Serbian and English, and their authors are: Gligorić's teammate from the national team and close friend, grandmaster Aleksandar Matanović and sports journalist Miroslav Nešić.

Quotes

"The moment of death has the power to stress in a single move the achievement or the futility of a life."

Notable games

One of Gligorić's most famous games was this win against the former world champion Tigran Petrosian at the great "Tournament of Peace" held in Zagreb in 1970. It displays Gligorić's virtuosity on the Black side of the King's Indian and his willingness to play for a sacrificial attack against one of history's greatest defenders. Zagreb 1970 was another Gligorić tournament success, as he tied for second behind Fischer, at the start of the latter's 1970–71 run of tournament and match victories.
Gligorić was the first to inflict a defeat on Petrosian after he won the world title from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963.