Ljubica Živković


Ljubica Živković, née Jocić, was a Serbian and Yugoslav chess player who held the title of Woman International master. She was a winner of the Yugoslav Women's Chess Championship.

Biography

Ljubica Živković was born in Bukovac, where she finished elementary school and then secondary economics school in Novi Sad. She was employed in Sarajevo, where she spent two years and then returned to Novi Sad, where she worked at Yugoslavian company Naftagaspromet information center until retirement.
She learned chess early in her youth, and she joined the Novi Sad Chess Club in 1953 when she moved to Novi Sad. She won several times at the Women's Championship of Vojvodina, and in 1959 in Zagreb she won the Yugoslav Women's Chess Championship. In 1966, Ljubica Živković was awarded the FIDE International Women Master title. In 1973, she participated in the Women's World Chess Championship Interzonal Tournament in Menorca and ranked 16th place. For her main Novi Sad chess club she played about 150 official matches, with a high percentage of performance. Most of her wins contributed to the club's biggest successes. Together with Dušica Čejić, playing for NŠK, she won the first cup in Yugoslavia's chess cup in Pula in 1979.
Unfortunately, due to family and business reasons and poor support of chess structures, Ljubica Živković was chessfully dealing with amateurishness and did not use her great chess potential. According to some estimates, she could enter the very top of the world women's chess.
After completing her chess player career, Ljubica Živković was known as chess arbitr. She was awarded the title of the International Chess Arbitr in 1984, and she served as deputy chief arbitr and chief arbitr of the 29th Chess Olympiad in Novi Sad in 1990.