Robert Hübner (November 6, 1948 -) is a German chess Grandmaster, and chess writer. At the age of eighteen he became the champion of West Germany, in1975, he was regarded as one of the world’s best players. In 1980, he reached third place in the FIDE world ranking list.

In the1970s and 1980s he took part in many notable tournaments: at Tilburg 1978 and Montreal 1979, he played amongst such great players like Anatoly Karpov, Mikhail Tal, and Jan Timman. Furthermore, in 1974, he won in Houston, at Munich 1979 (shared with Ulf Andersson and Boris Spassky). He won the Rio de Janeiro Interzonal in 1979 (shared with Lajos Portisch and Tigran Petrosian), then he tied for the first place at Linares 1985 (with Ljubomir Ljubojević). He remained an active player to the 2000s, but he could not dedicate all his time to professional chess due to his academic career.

In 2000, he got one silver medal as a member of the German team in the 34th Chess Olympiad in Istanbul.

He received the International Master title in 1969, and became a Grandmaster in 1971. He was a candidate for World Championship in 1981 and 1984, besides, he participated in some Interzonals, too. According to Chessmetrics his highest rating was 2732.

Hübner’s technique is considered to be efficient and ruthless. According to Bill Hartston, "His perfectionist and rather pessimistic approach, however, prevented him from reaching the very top." He always had debates and withdraws in the most impossible moments, and these impeded his growth. He withdrew from the Candidates match against Tigran Petrosian, referring to unbearable conditions, and in 1980 he did the same against Viktor Korchnoi. He was not very lucky when he played in the Candidates Quarterfinal against Vasily Smyslov in 1983 and Smyslov refused to play rapid tie-break games (this was optional at the time). The match ended with Smyslov’s win decided by a roulette wheel.

Hübner contributed to the birth of many chess writings including his study about the world champion players and an extensive analysis of the brilliant chess players of the 19th centruy. Recently he has been working on a detailed analysis and a study of the chess games of world champions with an emphasis particularly on Bobby Fischer and Alexander Alekhine.

The Hübner Variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence is named after him: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e3 c5 5. Bd3 Nc6 6. Nf3 Bxc3+.

Hübner is also known as one of the world's best xiangqi players, who is not from China.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org; http://www.chessmetrics.com