Borislav Kostić (24 February 1887 – 3 November 1963) was a Serbianchessgrandmaster and a popularizer of the game. He was one of the best players in the world during the early part of the 20th century[2] and in 1950 was among the inaugural recipients of the title International Grandmaster from FIDE.
Borislav Kostic was born in Vršac, Kingdom of Hungary, at the time part of Austria-Hungary. His father Dimitrije was a merchant and his mother was Emilija (née: Mandukić). He learned chess around the age of ten and made rapid progress while studying Oriental Trade in Budapest. He also spent time in Vienna, the chess capital of the day, and this enabled him to get the high level practice necessary to take his game to the next level.
In 1910 he moved to Cologne and from there, travelled and toured extensively, mainly in the Americas, playing matches against local champions and simultaneousblindfold chess. At New York in 1916, he once played twenty opponents without sight of a board and won nineteen games and drew one, while engaging in polite conversation with opponents and spectators.
Kostic played more formal matches against Frank Marshall, Jackson Showalter, and Paul Leonhardt, and won them all. At Havana in 1919 however, his winning streak ended with a 5–0 loss to Capablanca. Capablanca wrote that his own career peaked with this match.[4] Kostic also played tournaments while in the United States, including New York 1916, Chicago 1918 and New York 1918, where he finished second behind Capablanca.
A strong player in his own right, Kostic is mostly famous not for his tournament results but for his chess world tours. From 1923 to 1926, Kostic travelled to Australasia, the Far East, Africa, India, and Siberia - places that were barely represented on the chess map of the time. In one match held in Africa at the equator, Kostic was in the northern hemisphere, and his opponent on the southern.
During World War II, Kostić was imprisoned in a concentration camp by a Nazi SS commander (Schiller) because he declined to participate in tournaments called "Free Europa" and to glorify the Nazi regime. Afterwards, he played chess only in a more minor capacity. His final appearance was at the Zürich veterans tournament of 1962, which he won. Kostic was awarded the Grandmaster title by FIDE in 1950, on its inaugural list. He was fluent in Russian, English, Hungarian, German, Spanish and Hebrew. He died in Belgrade in 1963, aged 76.[1]
