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8 - City Lights News Milan - News/Events September 2002, Milan Italy citylightsnews.com |
Milan Matulović (born 10 June 1935) is a chess Grandmaster who was the second or third strongest Yugoslav player for much of the 1960s and 1970s behind Svetozar Gligorić and possibly Borislav Ivkov. He was primarily active before 1977, but has remained an occasional tournament competitor as recently as 2003.
[edit] CareerMatulović was born in Belgrade. In 1958 he played a four game training match with Bobby Fischer, of which only one game (a Matulović win) has survived. He achieved the International Master title in 1961 and became a grandmaster in 1965. He won the Yugoslav chess championships of 1965 and 1967 and had a number of successes in international tournaments, possibly his best result being equal first with Gligorić, Ivkov and Lev Polugaevsky at Skopje 1969 ahead of former World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik among others. He also had excellent results in the Chess Olympiads. He played seventy-eight games in six events for Yugoslavia, with the overall result of forty-six won, twenty-eight drawn and only four lost, with a 76.9 percent score, the tenth all-time best olympic performance. His pursuit of the world championship was rather less successful, as he never advanced to the Candidates stage of the process for selecting a challenger for the title. He played in the celebrated 1970 "USSR versus Rest of the World" match on eighth board against Botvinnik, losing one game and drawing the other three. A certain controversy attended this pairing,[1] as Matulović was well known for his "Botvinnik complex" and a long history of poor results against the Soviet player; there were accusations that the Soviet team captain had placed Botvinnik on a lower board than his stature would warrant in order to take advantage of this. Matulović may be coaching the Yugoslav national team (as of 2007). [edit] ControversiesControversy in actions both over and away from the board was nothing new to Matulović. Over the board he was known for playing out hopeless positions long after grandmaster etiquette called for a resignation, allegedly in the hopes of reaching adjournment (suspension of a game for resumption the next day, common in tournament play at the time) so that the news reports would read "Matulović's game is adjourned" rather than "Matulović lost!"[2] More seriously, in the aftermath of the 1970 Interzonal tournament at Palma de Mallorca, he was accused of "throwing" his game against Mark Taimanov in return for a $400 bribe, thus allowing Taimanov to advance to the Candidates matches,[3] where he was famously defeated by Bobby Fischer 6-0. The accusations centered on Matulović's conduct during the game[4] and the alleged feebleness of his resistance. The score of the notorious Taimanov-Matulović game follows, from which the reader can draw his or her own conclusions:
Perhaps Matulović's most notorious transgression was against Istvan Bilek at the Sousse Interzonal in 1967. He played a losing move, then took it back after saying "j'adoube" ("I adjust" - used to adjust pieces on their square, see Touch-move rule). His opponent complained to the arbiter, but the move was allowed to stand. This incident earned Matulović the nickname "J'adoubovic."[5][6][7][8] Matulović was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and served nine months in prison for a car accident in which a woman was killed.[9] [edit] Illustrative gameMatulović's sharp attacking play is shown in a more favorable light in this game against the Bulgarian grandmaster Georgi Tringov from the 1970 Chess Olympiad at Siegen.
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[edit] External links
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