Lajos Portisch

Eight-time Candidate Tournament participant

Ranking: highest position world number two in 1981

Highest FIDE Elo Rating: 2655

Tournament career: winner of 15 super-tournaments:

4x winner of Tata Steel Masters

2x winner of Hastings International Chess Congress

winner of Las Palmas 1972, Tilburg 1978 

and several others…

Chess Olympiads: one gold, three silver, and two bronze team medals, two silver and one bronze individual medals

Why he deserved it:

Hungarians have an incredibly strong chess tradition and history, and in this series, several players (and one female player) from this country have already appeared. Other great Hungarian chess players like Richard Rapport didn’t even make it into the top 100. Today we will answer the question of who is the historical king of Hungarian chess players – Lajos Portisch.

In his chess career, the incredible eight participations in the Candidates stand out at first glance, which in his era were played in the form of matches. His consistency was unbelievable – between 1966 and 1990, he failed to qualify for the Candidates matches only once – in 1971 when Fischer won the Candidates and subsequently the title. Otherwise, Portisch was a constant presence at the top of chess, with his best results in these matches being two semifinals (losing to Spassky in 1977 and Hübner in 1980). He was ranked as high as second in the world.

In 1970, he participated in the USSR vs World match, where on the third board for the world team he won his mini-match against Viktor Korchnoi. He collected medals of all colors at the Chess Olympiads, and his tournament successes in Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg, Hastings, or Las Palmas often came at the expense of the greatest chess players of that time. For example, his fourth title from the Dutch tournament is very valuable, where he outperformed Korchnoi, Andersson, Timman, Mecking, or Najdorf. He won the Las Palmas 1972 tournament ahead of Larsen, Smyslov, and Bronstein. Most of his triumphs can be categorized similarly, let’s mention Tilburg 1978, where he won ahead of Timman, Hübner, Spassky, Larsen, Hort, and others.

Best games:

Lajos Portisch vs Svein Johannessen

Chess Olympiad 1966, Havana