Hübner Year by Year: Volume I

Robert Hübner (1948-2025) was one of the world’s leading players in the 1970s-1980s, reaching four world championship candidates cycles. Widely recognised as Germany’s greatest chess player since Emanuel Lasker, he reached the candidates final against Korchnoi over the 1980-1981 New Year. He was ranked number 3 in the world in July 1981, behind only Karpov and Korchnoi.

Following the success of their year by year series on Korchnoi, the winning team of Tibor Karolyi (games analysis) and Hans Renette (biography) is back with a new multi-volume series on Robert Hübner. While less information is available on his life outside chess than with Korchnoi, Hans has managed to find several contemporary sources and to interview people who knew Hübner to compile an informative portrait of Hübner the man. Some information was provided by Robert himself, although he was clearly unwell by the time this project began.

In volume one, which covers the period of 1959 to 1979, we read about the early part of his career, from child prodigy to world championship candidate in the 1970-1971 cycle, when he lost narrowly to Petrosian in the quarter-final, to his gold medal on first board at the 1972 Skopje Olympiad, and ending with his shared first place in the 1979 Rio de Janeiro Interzonal.

In this series, Tibor demonstrates in particular that Hübner was one of the world’s most resilient endgame players. He was one of very few players to draw with Fischer in a difficult endgame, and he saved many lost endgames, often at critical times: he even saved them against Karpov and Kasparov. We find that Hübner generally withstood tension well, but occasionally collapsed under pressure. Also, rarely for an elite player, he was equally comfortable playing both 1.e4 and 1.d4 throughout his career.

Opponents in the 159 games and samples instructively analysed by Tibor in volume one include world champions Karpov, Fischer, Spassky, Petrosian, Tal, and Smyslov, as well as many other players from the world and German elites. The book is supplemented by a selection of tournament photos.