Albin Planinc (also spelled Planinec) (18 April 1944 – 20 December 2008)A forgotten genius: Albin Planinc (Planinec) (8 April 1944, Briše - 11 December 2008, Ljubljana)
/ref> was a

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

n chess Grandmaster. He was born in a working-class family in Briše near

Zagorje Hrvatsko Zagorje (; Croatian Zagorje; ''zagorje'' is Croatian language, Croatian for 'backland' or 'behind the hills') is a cultural region in northern Croatia, traditionally separated from the country's capital Zagreb by the Medvednica mount ...

in the

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, in

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-occupied Slovenia. Planinc won the Slovenian youth championship in 1962. He also won the full

Slovenian Chess Championship The Slovenian Chess Championship is the national chess championship held in Slovenia. The championship has been played since the 1950s, first as a regional championship in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and after the independence of ...

in 1968 and 1971. His earliest international success occurred at the first

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at Ljubljana 1969. However, his best result was achieved at the Amsterdam ( IBM tournament) 1973, where he shared first place with

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, ahead of

Lubomir Kavalek Lubomir (Lubosh) Kavalek (, August 9, 1943 – January 18, 2021) was a Czech-American chess player. He was awarded both the International Master and International Grandmaster titles by FIDE in 1965.Hooper & Whyld 1992, p. 195. He won two Czechos ...

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and László Szabó. He also tied for 2nd–4th at Čačak 1969, won at Varna 1970, shared 1st at Čačak 1970, took 9th at Vršac (Kostić Memorial,

Henrique Mecking Henrique Costa Mecking (born 23 January 1952), also known as Mequinho, is a Brazilian chess grandmaster who reached his zenith in the 1970s and is still one of the strongest players in Brazil. He was a chess prodigy, drawing comparisons to Bobb ...

won), tied for 2nd–3rd at Skopje 1971, tied for 3rd–5th at Wijk aan Zee 1974 (

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Walter Browne Walter Shawn Browne (10 January 1949 – 24 June 2015) was an Australian-born American chess and poker player. Awarded the title Grandmaster (GM) by FIDE in 1970, he won the U.S. Chess Championship six times. Early years Browne was born to ...

won), took 6th at Hastings 1974/75 (Hastings International Chess Congress, Vlastimil Hort won), tied for 2nd–3rd at Štip 1978, and took 12th at Polanica Zdrój 1979 (17th Rubinstein Memorial). Planinc played on fourth board (+9 –1 =5) for Yugoslavia in the 21st Chess Olympiad at Nice 1974, where he won a team silver medal. He was awarded the GM title in 1972, then became a chess trainer when the strain of playing tournament chess was contributing to his poor mental health (in those days, medication was relatively ineffective). Planinc continued to suffer from severe depression for decades, spending the last years of his life at a mental institution in Ljubljana. In 1993, his last name was changed to Planinec by mistake. In ''The Penguin Encyclopedia of Chess'', Grandmaster Raymond Keene said of Planinc, "he specializes in apparently outdated openings into which his imaginative play infuses new life".The Penguin Encyclopedia of Chess, Golombek, 1981, p. 346 Mentally ill in his later years, he died in a nursing home in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

References

External links

* 1944 births 2008 deaths Chess Grandmasters Slovenian chess players Yugoslav chess players People from the Municipality of Zagorje ob Savi Chess Olympiad competitors {{Yugoslav Chess Championship