Jan Timman

Jan Timman (1951 to 2026) was a Dutch chess grandmaster who was among the world's leading players from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and was known as The Best of the West as the strongest non-Soviet player of his time. Born in Amsterdam, he finished third at the 1967 World Junior Championship aged fifteen, became an International Master in 1971 and a Grandmaster in 1974, and won the Dutch Championship that year and on many later occasions, nine times in all. He was ranked second in the world in 1982, won tournaments including Wijk aan Zee and Linares, and reached the Candidates stage several times. He lost the 1993 FIDE World Championship match to Anatoly Karpov. He played thirteen Chess Olympiads for the Netherlands, won the top-board gold in 1976, and edited New In Chess and wrote several well regarded books.