Svetozar Gligorić
- September 28, 2025
Three-time Candidate Tournament participant (1953, 1959, 1968)
Ranking: Chessmetrics: highest world sixth, FIDE: fifteenth in the world
Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2600
Tournament career: winner of ten super-tournaments:
2x Mar de Plata Chess Tournament, Belgrade Chess Tournament
winner Warsaw 1947, Stockholm 1954, Dallas 1957
and several others…
Chess Olympiads: one gold, six silver, and five bronze team medals, one individual gold medal
Why he deserved it:
Gligorić is considered the best chess player in the history of Serbia, and indeed all of Yugoslavia. He was three times among the candidates for the world championship, although his results in these tournaments were not dazzling (13/15, 5/8, loss in the quarterfinals) and he never came close to playing for the title. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was consistently among the top ten players in the world. When FIDE released the first official Elo list in 1971, Svetozar was fifteenth in the world. However, it is fair to say that by that time he was almost fifty years old and, like most chess players of his age, his best years were behind him.
Gligorić was generally a popular figure among players and chess fans. He was reputed to have a golden character and was famous for his philosophy “I play against the pieces, not the opponent,” expressing that he felt no animosity towards his opponents.
Ten victories in super-tournaments, numerous Olympic medals, and three participations in the Candidate Tournament make this player a legend, albeit perhaps somewhat forgotten today.
Why he isn’t higher:
Gligorić did not have the best results against his star contemporaries. His overall positive score with Max Euwe is noteworthy, but otherwise, he mostly lost more or less. Of the tournaments he won, the two titles in Mar de Plata were particularly prestigious, while the others, although valuable victories, were not the most prestigious. Svetozar is undoubtedly a very successful chess player, but he found himself here in tough competition.
Best games:
Tigran Petrosian vs Svetozar Gligorić
Zagreb 1970
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Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.