1. Lajos Portisch was born on 4 April 1937 and is a Hungarian chess Grandmaster, whose positional style earned him the nickname, the "Hungarian Botvinnik".
17 Facts About Lajos Portisch
1. 2.
Lajos Portisch won many strong international tournaments during his career.
3.
Lajos Portisch represented Hungary at the World Junior Chess Championship, Antwerp 1955.
4.
Lajos Portisch successfully represented Hungary in several team matches in 1956 and 1957, against Poland, Estonia, the Soviet Union, Belarus, and Yugoslavia.
5.
Lajos Portisch made his first Student Olympiad and full Olympiad appearances for Hungary in 1956; he would eventually represent Hungary at a record twenty Olympiads.
6.
Lajos Portisch made his first national top-level appearance in 1955 at age 18, at the Hungarian Chess Championship.
7.
Lajos Portisch was awarded the grandmaster title by FIDE in 1961.
8.
Only six players qualified for the Candidates, but due to a rule limiting the number of players from a single country, the Soviet Union players Leonid Stein and David Bronstein were ineligible, so Lajos Portisch played a match against Samuel Reshevsky to determine who would be the sixth qualifier.
9.
Lajos Portisch was Karpov's second in his last world championship match against Kasparov in 1990.
10.
Lajos Portisch was very active on the international tournament scene from the late 1950s through the early 1990s, and was one of the top performers for over thirty years, with many titles against elite fields.
11.
Lajos Portisch often finished ahead of the top Soviet Grandmasters at important events, was usually near the top of the table, and only rarely finished with minus scores, showing remarkable consistency.
12.
Lajos Portisch won at least one major international event per year for nearly two decades.
13.
Lajos Portisch won the second Interpolis Tournament in the Netherlands in 1978, ahead of Timman.
14.
Lajos Portisch represented Hungary four times at Student Olympiads, steadily improving his results, and winning three medals.
15.
Lajos Portisch participated in a record 20 Olympiads from 1956 until 2000, playing a record 260 games, over a record six decades, and won 11 medals.
16.
Lajos Portisch has represented Hungary at eight European Team Championships, winning a total of nine medals.
17.
Lajos Portisch played board one for Hungary at the inaugural World Team Championship, Lucerne 1985.