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Lubomir Ftacnik was born on October 30, 1957 in Bratislava. The chess has learned to play at the age of 7 years, but as a 13 year old he has gone to the chess club. His chess performance, however, rose at a very fast pace and already at the junior age he managed to achieve several fantastic achievements. In 1977 he became the European Junior Champion and was awarded a silver medal at the junior world championships. In 1980 he was awarded the title of Grandmaster, which succeeded him as the second Slovak player in history. He won a number of major international tournaments such as Dortmund 1981, Baden-Baden 1987, Sydney 1991, Hamburg 1998, Los Angeles 1999 and others. He is a five-time champion of Czechoslovakia (1981, 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1989). His top-ranked chess rating reached 2001, at 2618 elo points.
In 1982 he was a member of the Czechoslovak team, which won a historic success at the Chess Olympiad - silver medals, to which he significantly contributed with his excellent individual results. He played for Czechoslovakia seven times at the Chess Olympiads (1980-1992) and for Slovakia up to eleven times (1994-2016).
In 2015, he represented Slovakia at the Dresden Senior World Championships, where thanks to his excellent performance at the first chessboard, Slovakia won the gold medals and the historical success as the title of World Senior Team Coach.