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| Botvinnik - Ostojic Belgrade 1969 |
Although he was not very well known, Ostojic scored a number of firsts: Vrnjacka Banja 1975, Paris 1968, 1969 and 1970, San Juan 1971, Casablanca 1974 and Hasselt 1974.
I saw Ostojic playing in the international tournament in Cleveland, Ohio in 1975. My impression was that he was kind of a quiet, mousy guy who seemed to keep to himself. In that tournament he finished second a half point behind Istvan Csom. Although Ostojic won seven games, his three losses, perhaps resulting from his own celebration of winning the GM titile in Vranacka Banja before coming to Cleveland, spoiled his chances for taking the top place.
In spite of his success in 1975, according to the Chessmetrics site Ostojic wasn’t even ranked among the top 100 players in the world, but his rating, which hovered around 2500, meant that in that day he was a solid GM.
Ostojic met an untimely end at the age of 58. Bill Wall says he committed suicide in Mainz, Germany while Wikipedia says he died when some gangsters threw him out of a window because of unpaid gambling debts.
Sixteen players contested for the title in Belgrade. Four shared the first prize: Milan Matulovic, Lev Polugaevsky, Svetozar Gligoric and Borislav Ivkov each scoring 10. Mikhail Botvinnik came in lone seventh.
1-4) Milan Matulovic, Lev Polugaevsky, Svetozar Gligoric and Borislav Ivkov 10.0
5-6) Levente Lengyel and Ewfim Geller 9.5
7) Mikhail Botvinnik 8.5
8) Duncan Suttles 7.5
9) Aleksandar Matanovic 6.5
10-11) Enver Bukic and Bojan Kurajica 6.0
12-15) Dragoljub Janosevic, Dragutin Sahovic, Georgi Tringov and Predrag Ostojic 5.5
16) Hans J. Hecht 4.5
Botvinnik’s result was a little surprising as earlier in the year Botvinnik and Geller had shared first place at Wijk aan Zee ahead of Portisch and Keres. In 1969 the top rated players in the world were: Fischer, Spassky, Korchnoi, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Larsen, Geller, Portisch, Keres and Polugaevsky.
By the winter of 1969, before Belgrade which was played in December, Botvinnik said he had decided to give up tournament play within a year. This decision should have made his final events more meaningful, but he was simply not motivated.
The field at Belgrade, which was dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the ousting of the Nazis in World War II, was so strong that Botvinnik's performance rating was still a creditable 2653. He played one impressive game and that was against...Ostojic!
The Soviet Patriarch had two more events planned. The first was the extraordinary Match of the Century, a ten-board, 4-game match pitting the USSR against the rest of the world that was scheduled for March 29 to April 5, 1970, also in Belgrade.
Botvinnik was furious over being placed down on board 8 in that match and wrote, “A number of grandmasters - those who were playing on the top boards – made sure that I was put on board eight...”
He saw it as an insult designed to get him to refuse to play. But, in reality it made sense because the World board eight player was Milan Matulovic who had lost twice to Botvinnik in the previous three years.
In any case, the board placement decision for the Soviet team caused so much animosity that it was reported by Alexander Nikitin, the team trainer, that half the team wasn’t talking to the other half. And, Botvinnik wrote in Achieving the Aim that if he had refused to go to Belgrade there was strong possibility the World team would win.
When the Soviet team arrived at the Moscow airport to depart for the match, team members gathered for pictures, but Botvinnik flatly refused to have his picture taken with the team, stating that he wouldn’t be photographed with “them.”
The USSR barely won the match by a score of 20.5-19.5 and Botvinnik defeated Matulovic +1 -0 =3, so maybe be was right...his one point margin insured the victory for the Soviet team!?
What was Botvinnik’s final event, you ask? His final event was supposed to be a match with Bobby Fischer in the spring of 1970, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Chess Society of Leiden in the Netherlands!
Botvinnik and Fischer negotiated indirectly, through the Dutch organizers, but when it came to dealing with Fischer, the Dutch were on a fool’s errand.
Botvinnik wanted a 16-game match, presumably because he didn’t have the stamina for a 24-game format that he had once considered the absolute minimum. Fischer wanted no limit on games with the winner being the first to score six wins.
Somehow Botvinnik thought he and Fischer had reached a compromise on a best of 18 games match and so he started training with Spassky at a resort town on the Black Sea. At Botvinnik’s request a notebook with about 500 of Fischer’s games were prepared and every day Botvinnik, who said Fischer reminded him of Smyslov, began studying the games.
But, with our 20-20 hindsight we all know that when it came to dealing with the irrational Fischer, nothing was a sure thing. Fischer was still insisting on the no limit, 6-win format and the match collapsed. Botvinnik said it was because of Fischer’s maniacal fear of returning to competition.
The Dutch organizers replaced the match with a four-player tournament that was played from April 18, 1970 to May 6 in Oegstgeest. The tournament, which proved to be beyond boring, included former world champion Botvinnik, the new world champion Boris Spassky, the player with the best tournament record in the world, Bent Larsen, and the Dutch champion, Jan Hein Donner.
Spassky won and Donner, who was expected to be cannon fodder, did much better than expected. For his part, Botvinnik managed one good game, an endgame win from Bent Larsen. The final standings were Spassky (+2 -0 =10), Donner (+1 -1 =10) and Botvinnik (+1 -2 =9) tied with Larsen (+2 -3 =7).
After this tournament Botvinnik was through with competition because as his daughter Olga explained, “He couldn’t create beautiful games anymore.” She said her father had said he didn’t want to just “slap pieces about the board.”
I see I have been sidetracked here, so back to Belgrade, 1969. Ostojic defeated Geller in this tournament; his opponent in this game was Enver Bukic (December 3, 1937 – February 22, 2017, 79 years old) also from Yugoslavia.
Bukic was awarded the IM title in 1964 and the GM title in 1976. He was a member of the student national team which won a silver medal at the 1963 Olympics and he always performed very well in the Yugoslav Championships. His best international results were first at the Kostic Memorial in Vrsac 1975, first at Stip 1976 and first at Uljma 1976. He lived in Ljubljana, the birthplace of his wife who was a historian.
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