The Life and Games of D.Velimirovic – Volume 1 & 2 – George Mohr & Ana Velimirovic

Description

Dragoljub Velimirovic was a former Yugoslav – Serbian, chess grandmaster whose international career was handicapped by political intrigues and his outspoken temperament.

During the heyday of the USSR as the greatest national chess power, the former Yugoslavia was capable of running the Soviet Union a good second. Dragoljub Velimirovic posed a real threat to the men from Moscow.

Velimirovic was born in 1942 to a prominent family from Valjevo, in the former Yugoslavia. He was introduced to chess at the age of seven by his mother, Jovanka Velimirovic, one of Yugoslavia’s leading female chess players.

He died at the age 72, being one of the last players to develop a system or strategy that is so inventive it bears its creator’s name.

It is a feat that is unlikely to be repeated in the modern era, when computer-based games and databases so thoroughly dominate competition that it is almost impossible to come up with something new.

That does not mean that players were more talented or courageous in the decades when Velimirovic was in his prime. Velimirovic, who became a grandmaster in 1973, was never among the 20 top-ranked players in the world. And that was when there were only 200 or so grandmasters; today, there are about 1,800.

325 pages – hardback only

I sincerely hope that you, dear readers, will enjoy the wonderful masterpieces you will find in this book. In addition to the authors, some of Drasko’s contemporaries were also involved in the writing, and they immediately responded with pride and love to the request to keep the memory of the Serbian genius alive. I would like to thank all those who participated in this project.

To the Grandmasters who wrote down their own memories of Drasko Velimirovic, which you will find in this book in special ”boxes”. To the contemporaries, friends, and comrades-in-arms of ”Boss” who remember this or that anecdote, this or that event, this or that memory.

This second volume covers Drasko’s life and chess from 1976 until 2011.

Hardback – 380 pages