Gligoric Svetozar (02.02.1923-14.08.2012)

Serbian Grandmaster (1951).

Gligoric learned to play chess in early childhood. He lost his parents before the War, and the president of the Belgrade Chess Club took him to his place, and later they left to Montenegro on the German invasion. In 1939 he participated in Yugoslavian Amateur Championship for the first time where he shared 1-2nd places and got the Yugoslav master title. He could not develop his chess skills because of the breaking out of the 2nd World War. He took part in partisans struggle for the liberation of Montenegro and was even awarded for bravery. Having won Sofia in 1945, Ljubljana in 1946 and Warsaw tournament in 1947 being 2 points ahead of Isaak Boleslavsky, Ludek Pachman, and Vasily Smyslov, his name started to be well known by the chess world.

Gligoric participated several times in strong tournaments at Hastings and acted well in 1951/52, 1956/57, 1959/60, 1960/61, 1962/63 finishing five times first and four times second. During about twenty years from 1951, he was one of the strongest chess players in Yugoslavia. He showed his best results at Mar del Plata (1950), for participation in which he got the International Master title, Staunton Memorial (1951), at Hollywood 1952, Mar del Plata and Rio de Janeiro 1953, Stockholm 1954, Dallas 1957 +4=0-1, Torremolinos in 1961 (+6=5), at Belgrade in 1962 (+6=5), at Reykjavik in 1964 (+11=1-1), Copenhagen 1965, Tel Aviv and Dundee 1967, Berlin 1971, London 1972, Manila 1968,  at Belgrade (1969) with Boris Ivkov, Milan Matulovic, Lev Polugaevsky, at Montilla in 1977 (+5=4) and at Sochi with Vaganian and Beliavsky in 1986. He did well in 1959 at Zurich where he was 2nd (+9=4-2), after Mikhail Tal followed by Bobby Fischer and Paul Keres; and in 1961 at Bled he shared 3rd place (+7=11-1) with Paul Keres and Tigran Petrosian behind of Mikhail Tal and Bobby Fischer.

Gligoric participated in seven Interzonal tournaments and three times was a Candidate (1953, 1959, 1968). At the Saltjobaden Interzonal in 1952, he was the 5th but showed bad results in the Candidates tournament. In 1958 at Portoroz Interzonal tournament he was the 2nd (+8=10-2) behind Mikhail Tal and the next year tied the 5th place with Bobby Fischer in the Candidates matches. In 1967 at Sousse he shared the 2nd place with Efim Geller and Viktor Korchnoi but then was defeated in the Candidates quarter-final match by Tal. He defeated Stahlberg in 1949 with a score +2=9-1 and lost a match to Reshevsky in 1952 scored +1=7-2 then beat Donner 7,5-4,5 in 1968.

In the period 1947-1965, he was the national champion eleven times. For nearly 30 years he was the head of the Yugoslavian national team (544 games) and as a member of it who got the supreme title at Chess Olympiad at Dubrovnik in 1950. At the 1958 Chess Olympiad at Munich, he showed the best result on the 1st board- 12/15, ahead of Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1973 at European Team Championship in Bad he shared 1-2 places on the 1st board with Boris Spassky. From 1950 till 1972, he achieved an incredible result by been awarded a total of 12 medals for best, second or third best board performance at the Olympiads.

He got the title of International Arbiter in 1972 and was the chief arbiter of the World Championship match Anatoly Karpov- Garry Kasparov in 1984/85 and many others.

His style of play is characterized by systematic study and self-discipline.
According to some Soviet  Grandmasters at the time he was a player of a dynamic, universal style, possessed of high game technique. He studied thoroughly the Sicilian Defense, Spanish opening, Nimzo-Indian and the King’s Indian Defence and added some innovations and interesting ideas into it.

Gligoric is a man of various interests and gifts; he is fond of music, foreign languages.
Being a journalist and broadcaster, he wrote numerous articles for chess magazines and some books, one of them is famous “Fischer-Spassky 1972”, which was translated into ten languages, Sicilian Defence (with Sokolov), World Chess Championships, 100 games of Gligoric in Serbo-Croat, I play against pieces. He was also the author of a monthly column in 5 different leading chess magazines.