Svetozar Gligorić: Biography, Facts and Career

Svetozar Gligorić (Serbian Cyrillic: Светозар Глигорић; 2 February 1923 – 14 August 2012) was a Serbian 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 and Gukesh). 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").

Quick facts about Svetozar Gligorić

• Full name: Svetozar Gligorić
• Born: 1923-02-02
• Nationality: Serbia
• Known as: Author
• Wikidata ID: Q158050

Profile compiled from public Wikipedia and Wikidata data. Details can change over time.