Petar Trifunovic
Encyclopedia
International Grandmaster
The title Grandmaster is awarded to strong chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain....
and Serbian (Yugoslav) Champion of chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
. At the first and second Yugoslav Championships, held 1935 in Belgrade and 1936 in Novi Sad
Novi Sad
Novi Sad is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, and the administrative centre of the South Bačka District. The city is located in the southern part of Pannonian Plain on the Danube river....
, he finished third behind Vasja Pirc
Vasja Pirc
Vasja Pirc was a leading Slovenian chess player. His name is most familiar to contemporary players as the originator of the hypermodern Pirc Defense...
and Boris Kostić, then second behind Pirc, respectively.
Chess career
Yugoslavia was for many years the world's second strongest chess nation and so it is a measure of his strength that he was able to win the Yugoslav championshipYugoslav Chess Championship
The Yugoslav Chess Championship is a tournament with great tradition, held to determine the national champion. It was a very strong event especially in the period 1945–1991, when it represented players from six federal republics, today independent countries....
five times in 1945, 1946, 1947 (shared with Svetozar Gligorić
Svetozar Gligoric
Svetozar Gligorić is a Serbian chess grandmaster. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record twelve times, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia...
), 1952, and 1961. The young Trifunovic was also an excellent scholar, obtaining a Law degree in 1933, followed by a Doctorate.
According to Cozens, in his book The Lost Olympiad, he had a reputation as a fierce attacking player in the 1930s and was known as 'Typhoonovic'. Later in his career, he concentrated more on positional play and defensive technique, his style becoming less adventurous but very difficult to refute. Unfortunately, he drew
Draw (chess)
In chess, a draw is when a game ends in a tie. It is one of the possible outcomes of a game, along with a win for White and a win for Black . Usually, in tournaments a draw is worth a half point to each player, while a win is worth one point to the victor and none to the loser.For the most part,...
too many games as a result and this may have prevented him from scaling even greater heights in the chess world. For example, his drawn match with Miguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf was a Polish-born Argentine chess grandmaster of Jewish origin, famous for his Najdorf Variation....
at Opatija
Opatija
Opatija is a town in western Croatia, just southwest of Rijeka on the Adriatic coast. , the town proper had a population of 7,850, with the municipality having a total 12,719 inhabitants.-Geography:...
1949 included ten drawn games (+1 -1 =10) and at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
in 1965 he drew all 15 of his games.
Of his international tournament successes, perhaps among the most memorable were: Zlín
Zlín
Zlín , from 1949 to 1989 Gottwaldov , is a city in the Zlín Region, southeastern Moravia, Czech Republic, on the Dřevnice River. The development of the modern city is closely connected to the Bata Shoes company...
1945 (first), Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
1946 (tied for second after Najdorf), Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
1950 (first), Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
1951 (tied for second after Gligoric), Belgrade 1954 (third after Bronstein
David Bronstein
David Ionovich Bronstein was a Soviet chess grandmaster, who narrowly missed becoming World Chess Champion in 1951. Bronstein was described by his peers as a creative genius and master of tactics...
and Matanović
Aleksandar Matanovic
Aleksandar Matanović is a Serbian chess Grandmaster. He was born in Belgrade.Awarded the GM title in 1955, he was junior champion of Yugoslavia in 1948 and Yugoslav national champion in 1962 , 1969 and 1978...
, but ahead of Gligoric and Petrosian
Tigran Petrosian
Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian was a Soviet-Armenian grandmaster, and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. He was nicknamed "Iron Tigran" due to his playing style because of his almost impenetrable defence, which emphasised safety above all else...
). At Netanya
Netanya
Netanya is a city in the Northern Centre District of Israel, and is the capital of the surrounding Sharon plain. It is located north of Tel Aviv, and south of Haifa between the 'Poleg' stream and Wingate Institute in the south and the 'Avichail' stream in the north.Its of beaches have made the...
1961 he tied for first through third place with Matulović
Milan Matulovic
Milan Matulović 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...
and Czerniak
Moshe Czerniak
-Biography:In 1930 Moshe Czerniak took ninth at Warsaw in an event won by Paulino Frydman. In 1934 Czerniak emigrated from Poland to Palestine . In April 1935, he tied for 7th–8th in Tel Aviv . He was Palestinian Champion in 1936 and 1938. In April 1939, he played in the First Lasker Chess Club...
. At Prague 1961 and Beverwijk
Corus chess tournament
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament formerly called the Corus chess tournament takes place every year, usually in January, in a small town called Wijk aan Zee, part of the larger Beverwijk in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands...
1962 he came outright first and at Sarajevo, also in 1962, third after Gligoric and Portisch
Lajos Portisch
Lajos Portisch is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster, whose positional style earned him the nickname, the "Hungarian Botvinnik"...
. At Noordwijk
Noordwijk
Noordwijk is a town and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. The municipality covers an area of 51.53 km² and had a population of 24,707 in May 2006....
in 1965 he finished second to Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
(ahead of Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
, Larsen
Bent Larsen
Jørgen Bent Larsen was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play and he was the first western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance of chess...
and Donner
Jan Hein Donner
Johannes Hendrikus Donner was a Dutch chess grandmaster and writer. Donner was born in The Hague and won the Dutch Championship in 1954, 1957, and 1958. FIDE, the World Chess Federation, awarded him the GM title in 1959. He played 11 times for the Netherlands in the Chess Olympiads...
).
His International Master title was awarded in 1950 and the grandmaster title in 1953. He played for his country in seven Olympiads
Chess Olympiad
The Chess Olympiad is a biennial chess tournament in which teams from all over the world compete against each other. The event is organised by FIDE, which selects the host nation.-Birth of the Olympiad:The first Olympiad was unofficial...
between 1935 and 1962, the most memorable being the event held in his birthplace Dubrovnik, in 1950. An outstanding score of 10/13 won him the board 3 gold medal.
He popularised and subsequently had his name associated with a variation of Alekhine's Defence
Alekhine's Defence
Alekhine's Defence is a hypermodern chess opening that begins with the moves:Black tempts White's pawns forward to form a broad pawn centre, with plans to undermine and attack the White structure later in the spirit of hypermodern defence. White's imposing mass of pawns in the centre often includes...
. The Trifunovic Variation is identified by the move 5. ... Bf5 as a counter to White's Four Pawns Attack.