Svetozar Gligoric
Svetozar Gligoric 2 February 1923 – 14 August 2012) was a Serbian and Yugoslavian chess grandmaster. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record twelve times, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia. In 1958 he was declared the best athlete of Yugoslavia.
In the 1950s and 1960s Gligoric was one of the top players in the world, and also among the world's most popular, owing to his globe-trotting tournament schedule and a particularly engaging personality, reflected in the title of his autobiography, I Play Against Pieces. (I.e., playing without hostility toward the opponent, or playing differently against different players for "psychological" reasons; playing the board and not the man.)
In the 1950s and 1960s Gligoric was one of the top players in the world, and also among the world's most popular, owing to his globe-trotting tournament schedule and a particularly engaging personality, reflected in the title of his autobiography, I Play Against Pieces. (I.e., playing without hostility toward the opponent, or playing differently against different players for "psychological" reasons; playing the board and not the man.)