Career
Born in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America, he moved with his family to Germany at the age of five and was subsequently raised in the city of Wiesbaden. Buoyed by success, it was not long before he decided to become a full-time chess professional, whereupon he broke from his law degree to embark on the international chess tournament circuit. In attempting to reach the latter stages of the (PCA) World Championship, he scored well at the Groningen 1993 qualifying tournament, outperforming many players rated more highly, including Judit Polgár, Veselin Topalov and Evgeny Bareev.
In team chess, he was for many years a stalwart of the Bundesliga and represented Germany at all of the Olympiads between 1980-1996, except for the event held at Dubai in 1986.
At the European Team Chess Championship (ETC) he played three times, in 1983, 1989 and 1992, being honoured with selection at top board on the first and last occasions. At the Olympiad, he earned an individual bronze medal for his board three performance in 1990 and at the ETC, earned a team bronze in 1989.
Reputed to have been a successful trader on the stock market during profitable times, he acquired "celebrity" status in 2004, when he became romantically involved with Estonian supermodel Carmen Kass, herself a keen chess player and President of the Estonian Chess Federation. On the lead up to the 2008 Olympiad, Kass campaigned to bring the event to her home country, but ultimately lost out to Dresden"s bid.
At the peak of his chess career, Eric Lobron had an Elo rating of 2625.
Since the mid-2000s he has played little over-the-board chess, but competes online at The Internet Chess Club as Yardbird, where he holds one of the highest blitz ratings. He is also known to be a good player of Backgammon.