Borislav Ivkov: From Yugoslavia to Puerto Rico

There are many legends of the chess world from the post-war period (1945 to the present) who at some point have set foot on Puerto Rican soil to train our players, captain national teams, offer simultaneous displays, give talks, or simply play tournaments. Julio Bolbochán, Julio Granda, Anatoly Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik, Bent Larsen, Peter Leko, Edmar Mednis, Miguel Najdorf, Ludek Pachman, Oscar Panno, Judith Polgar, Boris Spassky, and Veselin Topalov are just some of those luminary figures whose presence has nourished Puerto Rican national chess. 

Personally, I had the opportunity to see one of these illustrious visitors in person when I was able to attend a talk on endgames given by Grandmaster Edmar Mednis in the mid-1990s at the Casa del Ajedrez at the old naval base in Miramar. Thirty years later I still remember the great impression that that conference left on me, conference given by the player who had beaten Bobby Fischer in a French Defense in the 1962 United States Championship.

Mednis was a great pedagogue of the  game, and on top of that that had also achieved a great result on the island a decade earlier, when he shared first place with the then Dominican international master Ramon Mateo in the 1984 San Sebastián International Tournament. 

In this essay I would like to highlight another of those masters who has left an indelible mark on Puerto Rican chess. I am referring to the Serbian Grandmaster Borislav Ivkov. What follows is mostly a personal chronicle sprinkled with historical data related to his relationship with our island. 

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From October 28 to the 30 of 1994, the Coamo International Chess Tournament was held and It was the first international event during Edgar Murray's presidency of the Puerto Rico Chess Federation. A few weeks before, a talk had been given at the Casa del Ajedrez, where the speaker was none other than Borislav Ivkov. It was precisely in that talk that I found out that the Yugoslav Grandmaster was going to play in Coamo, a news that immediately motivated me to participate in the event. I simply wanted to see that legend play in person. By then, when I was only 15 years old, I already knew who Ivkov was. For example, I had seen many mentions of him in Frank Brady's magnificent biography of Bobby Fischer, Profile of a Prodigy. I had also followed in his footsteps between 1992 and 1994 in the magazine New in Chess when they covered the annual “Women versus Veterans” meetings sponsored by the Dutch patron Joop van Oosterom. Finally, in 1992, Ivkov had participated as an assistant, along with Yuri Balashov (Karpov's former coach), in the well-remembered and controversial rematch between Fischer and Boris Spassky held in Sveti Stefan and Belgrade. An important reason why the Serbian grandmaster had been invited to help the former world champion was that on two occasions- once in Chile in 1959, and another one in Cuba in 1965- Ivkov had beaten the legendary American player. 

 As is well known, the 1992 rematch between Fischer and Spassky dominated the international media to the point that the newspaper El Nuevo Día both the reports from the EFE news agency and the columns written by former national champion Manuel Moraza that contained photos and the games. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that in some important ways I am a product of the dispute between Fischer and Spassky, its just that it wasn't caused by the legendary Reykjavik meeting of 1972, but of Sveti Stefan and Belgrade twenty years later. And well, now in Coamo I had the opportunity to see one of the protagonists, both of that 1992 meeting and in international chess, at its highest levels, during the decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s. 

And so it was that on Friday, October 28, around 6 in the afternoon, that I arrived at the playing hall in Coamo. There I saw a board with a handwritten list of the participants that would play in the international section, with Ivkov at the top with a local Elo-Bird of 2595 (at the time he had a Elo-FIDE of 2470), followed by a Ukranian international master that I had never heard of, Rafail Klovsky, who would soon become coach of the then prospect Waldemar Ortiz. There was also an important delegation of masters from the Dominican Republic, led by international master Gustavo Hernández. 

 In Coamo Ivkov won with 4.5 out of 5, half a point ahead of Hernández, Klovsky and the then national champion of Puerto Rico, Luis Santa-Torres. He defeated future national champion William Bermudez and three former Dominican national champions: Luis Belliard, Freddy Yabra, and Franklin Alvarez. His only draws in the 32-player field was with Luis Santa, who was also able to draw his game with Klovsky. 

Many of Ivkov's games in Coamo seemed to have the same theme: gaining small positional advantages to be realized in an endgame. One after another, the opponents succumbed to the technique of the 60-year-old Grandmaster who rarely got up from the table and wrote his moves with a simple pencil. The one who did get up from the table was me, playing in the open category, to watch the games of that legend. I remember that at the end of one of the rounds I ventured to ask for his autograph. I had brought my copy of Brady's book which featured a photo identified as that of a friendly game played during the 1966 Piatigorsky tournament between Fischer and Ivkov. Of course, it turned out that the opponent who appeared with his back turned towards the camera was not Ivkov (Borislav clarified that) but I still obtained, with his pencil, the legend's signature. 

 Another thing that impressed me a lot during the tournament in Coamo was Ivkov's way of analyzing. As expected, after finishing his games, the Yugoslavian Grandmaster analyzed with his opponent under the gaze of several of us who wanted to understand, echoing the famous book by Alexander Kotov, how to think like a Grandmaster. With perfect Spanish, Ivkov always gave general ideas and then ventured to show some specific lines. His emphasis on the logic of the game and how to put it to work was a course in theory and praxis that in turn reinforced the impression that chess was a very simple game. In short, the impact of seeing him play and analyze in person was tremendous. 

 Ivkov would return the following year to play in the 2nd Coamo International Tournament, a much stronger tournament than the previous year, with 32 players again. There he tied for first place with the Cuban International Master based in Miami, Blas Lugo, with 4 out of 5, but came second by tiebreaker, while third place went to Gustavo Hernández by tiebreaker (3.5 out of 5, tied with Marino Fernández, Rafail Klovsky, Luis Santa and Jorge Massana). 

From that tournament I remember how disappointed I was when in the second round Ivkov and the Ukrainian international master Rafail Klovsky agreed to a draw. Klovsky had just defeated Juan Santa's Benko Gambit in the first round (Juan would avenge that defeat later in the 3rd edition of the tournament in 1998) and I wanted to see the “clash of titans” that had not happened the previous year. Unfortunately they opted for a completely sterile variation of the Petroff Defense and agreed to a draw in around 5 to 10 minutes (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Ne5 d6 4.Nf3 Ne4 5 Qe2 Qe7 ½-½ ). 

 After these Coamo tournaments, I saw Ivkov in the San Ignacio Open Tournament (I think in 1996 or 1997). He won it comfortably with 4.5/5, offering a quick draw with white in the last round to national expert Miguel Mejías in the exchange variation of the king's Indian defense. From that tournament I also remember his encounter in a previous round against my teacher and future national champion Juan Dávila, who played an accelerated Dragon with black and obtained an excellent position, which he then misplayed to eventually loose. According to Dávila, something similar happened to him when he faced Ivkov in the 1984 San Sebastián open tournament. 

 The last time I saw Ivkov I had a somewhat more direct and personal encounter. The 1997 national championship was played at the Casa del Ajedrez in Miramar. The tournament was more or less halfway through and Luis Jose “Yisi” Torres, Orlando Santana, and Juan Dávila were leading the way (in the end Alejandro Montalvo won his second consecutive national championship). Ivkov was visiting and had sat down with Juan Santa to chat. I shyly approached Juan, asking him if I could ask Ivkov some questions. Juan smiled and looked at Ivkov, who immediately responded “sure, of course.” As I mentioned before, Ivkov had been one of Spassky's assistants in the 1992 revenge match. In what was possibly the best game of that match, game number eleven, Spassky with black succumbed to the Rossolimo variation in the Sicilian defense ( 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5) when Fischer offered him a queenside gambit early in the opening (3… g6 4. Bc6 bc6 5. 0-0 Bg7 6. Re1 e5 7. b4 cb4) . Then, in game 13, Spassky varied with 6… f6, a move that, according to the book I had bought on the match, written by the English Grandmaster and Korchnoi's former assistant, Raymond Keene, was prepared by Ivkov. And so, my first question to Ivkov was: “how did you come up with that idea with f6?” His prosaic response was that “in game 11 we noticed the importance of the black diagonal for White after his b4 gambit, so we decided to block it with everything possible, from the pawn on f6 to the Nh6-f7 maneuver. ”. Once again Ivkov showing how “easy” chess was, at least conceptually. 

 My second question was a little harsher, because it forced Ivkov to remember a moment in his career that definitely continued to give him nightmares. I asked the simple but painful question “what happened?” in reference to his very famous game in the penultimate round against Gilberto García at the Capablanca Memorial in Havana in 1965. Being one point up in the standings, with two rounds left, Ivkov was completely won against the tail-end of the tournament, Gilberto Garcia. Upon hearing my question, Ivkov smiled and put the position with Garcia after White's 36th move and told me something like "there was a lot of time pressure but I still don't know what happened to me." 

Diagram: In this position Black played 36…d3?? and after 37. Bc3 they could not avoid mate on h8. 

In the last round of this tournament Ivkov also lost, this time against Karl Robatsch, in a game that showed the mood caused by the previous defeat against Garcia. In the end he finished tied for 2nd place with Geller and Fischer, half a point behind Smyslov. The Serbian Grandmaster told me that until that moment he thought that the worst thing that had happened to him was the devastating defeat (2.5-5.5) against Larsen in the quarterfinals of the candidates tournament that had been held a few months earlier. Now reliving these events in my head, I realize that I should have alerted him that a common theme ran through the answers to both of my questions, the a1-h8 diagonal! 

 With this result in Havana, Ivkov in a way paid honor to one of the best-known collapses in chess. Five decades before this event in Cuba, Jose Raúl Capablanca had lost first place at the end of the historic 1914 Saint Petersburg tournament to Emmanuel Lasker after being the leader for much of the tournament. And well, it was against Lasker with whom he would compete in the world championship in 1921, precisely in Havana, 

 I don't remember much else about the rest of the conversation with Ivkov, but I do remember that at the end of the round that was being played in the national championship, the national masters and ex-champions, Orlando Santana and Yisi Torres, started to play blitz at one of the tables next to the wall that led to the office at the end of the hall. Ivkov sat down to watch them play and immediately said “please, no more theory, no more theory!” when he saw the Spanish exchange variation that had so much prominence over the years in the games between the two former national champions and that Ivkov himself had used successfully in Coamo (Santana had used it against Ivkov himself in San Sebastián in 1984 and had achieved a draw). 

Before those Coamo international tournaments, Borislav Ivkov had played in other events on the island, including the San Sebastián open in 1984 (tie for 1st with Ramón Mateo) and a closed international tournament that followed where he took 3rd-4th position. with 6/9 together with Juan Bellón López, behind Edmar Mednis and Ramón Mateo who scored 7/9 (the rest of the participants were Marcel Sisniega, Luis Blondet, Juan Santa, Yisi Torres, Orlando Santana and Manuel Moraza). 

He had also served as coach of several youth teams (San Juan 1986 and 1987), Olympic teams (Dubai 1986, Moscow 1994, Yerevan 1996 and Elista 1998) and when he was not captain, he was kind enough to offer his help in the analyses.

The national master and captain of the Olympic team, Enrique Bird, remembers that: 

 “Ivkov was always very attentive and helpful. Right at the beginning of Thessaloniki 1988 and Novi Sad 1990 he offered me his services and he was faithful to his offer [he was captain of Yugoslavia on both occasions]. He once brought Dragoljub Velimirovic with him to help us analyze a sealed game. Velimirovic spoke neither English nor Spanish but he moved the pieces and gesticulated very clearly in the analysis on the board.” 

 Regarding Ivkov's work with the Olympic team, former national champion Orlando Santana recalls: 

 “Ivkov scheduled the Olympics' training sessions during the day and usually it was after his lunch that it was my turn to train with him. When I arrived we had to take a walk around Condado, which was where his apartment was. He liked my speed in solving the tactics problems and when he gathered the group he always said 'let's see, Santana must have already solved it!'. His favorite phrase when there was an interesting combination or game was 'look at this, fantastic!.” 

 Apparently it was through Narciso Rabell that the Ivkov-Puerto Rico connection occurred in terms of his work with our teams. Former national champion Juan Dávila is almost sure that “they talked at the youth tournament in Argentina in 1985 about coming to train in Puerto Rico.” 

 Borislav Ivkov was part of a golden era of world chess, where players like Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Leonid Stein, Mikhail Tahl, Bent Larsen, Wolfgang Uhlmann, Viktor Korchnoi, Lajos Portisch and Bobby Fischer represented a new generation seeking to unseat Paul Keres, David Bronstein, Vassily Smyslov, Miguel Najdorf, Samuel Reshevsky and Mikhail Botvinnik as the greatest exponents of the game. During that period, Ivkov was consistently the second best player in the chess powerhouse nation of Yugoslavia behind the legendary Svetozar Gligoric. His run among the best probably had its last manifestation in the 1982 Bugojno tournament where a youthful Gary Kasparov won  (9.5/13) while Ivkov finished last (3.5/13). Even after this setback he continued to participate and achieve good performances in lower category tournaments. 

 The great Borislav Ivkov, who was the first World Junior Champion in 1951, Candidate for the World Championship in 1965, and winner of countless tournaments throughout the world, died on February 14, 2022 at the age of 88, apparently due to complications. related to Covid. This legendary figure of world chess definitely left his mark on the history of the game in our island and his legacy should be studied by new generations who seek inspiration to better develop their own game in all its facets. Without a doubt, Ivkov is one of the immortals of chess and we were very lucky that he connected part of his life with Puerto Rico in multiple ways. 

Below I present a game of the Serbian Grandmaster against the then national champion Juan Santa Torres. Santa tries to get off the theoretical path from the beginning against a rival known for playing everything, both with the white and black pieces. The attempts by the white pieces to complicate the game against such his experienced rival, lead to a counterattack against the white monarch that causes the loss of the game.