The legendary Hungarian Grandmaster Lajos Portisch was born in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary on April 4, 1937.
He was one of the strongest players in the world in the 60’s and 70’s. Portisch qualified and played in an incredible 12 straight Interzonals. He also qualified for the World Chess Championship Candidates Matches 5 times between 1965 to 1983.
He competed in 20 Olympiads between 1956 to 2000 and led Hungary to the Gold medal at the Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1978. He is also known as a good Opera singer!
Happy Birthday to the Hungarian legend!
He has agreed to meet the group that I am taking to Budapest in the end of June 2007! He will give a lecture and conduct a simul against the group.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Wow, a true legend. I thought he qualified for the WC Candidates matches much more recently than the 80’s, like 1990 or so. Yeah, Googling showed he played Timman in 1989.
Portisch also qualified for the 1983 Candidates Matches (in which he lost to Korchnoi in the quarterfinals).
Heyyyy…I was only trying to be helpful in regard to a nice item which I appreciated.
But changing “1980” to “1983” in the original item without saying anything makes my comment look really incomprehensible.
In making this change, you should have also changed “5” to “6” – Portisch having played in the 1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983 Candidates.
The poster above me is also correct in saying Portisch played in the 1988/9 Candidates. In this, he beat Vaganian in 1988 before losing to Timman in 1989.
Portisch also qualified from an Interzonal for (and played in) the 1985 Montpellier Candidates Tournament.
That makes 8 qualifications for the Candidates from the 12 Interzonals he played in (and 8 from the first 10, the final 2 being when he was aged over 50) – a very impressive record!
I notice a similar change has been made to the Wikipedia item on Portisch (which I presume is where you got the information from) …and a similar change not made!
I apologise if I seemed a bit Ed Winterish. But is it not better to correct errors if you see them? It was not meant as a criticism of the item as a whole (in fact, I’m doing Portisch a favour!). Many of your items are very good, and I much appreciate your site! (and agree with most of what you say.)
Regards.
Sorry, no change was made to Wikipedia. I thought it had been on a first look, and was going to check when writing my post, but couldn’t as you lose your post if you move away from your page.
So the Wikipedia item is still not fully correct.