TWIC is 31. First issue 17th September 1994.Obituary (1951-2026)
Jan Timman 1951-2026
Mark Crowther - Thursday 19th February 2026
Jan Timman, the Dutch number one chess player for many years and World number two in January 1982, has passed away at the age of 74. Timman first qualified for an Interzonal in 1979 and was a Candidate between the years of 1986 and 1996. He fought a 24 game match for the FIDE World Chess Championship against Anatoly Karpov in 1993. His most impressive tournament win was the 1991 Immopar Rapid in Paris, this was a knockout where he beat Gata Kamsky, Anatoly Karpov, Viswanathan Anand, and Garry Kasparov. Timman was a very successful tournament player, especially in the 1980s and his career results are more than comparable with the legendary Bent Larsen. Timman had a Universal and varied style and at his best his games were of the very highest quality. He noted in his book Timman's Triumphs that there were frequently errors in conversion of advantages, even in his best games, and also noted too many dubious positions with black, these were the key downsides to his play. That games collection was just one of his many excellent books, he was also a renowned study composer. His last games were in the Dutch Championship in July 2024 where he lost to Erwin L'Ami in the first round of this knockout tournament. He announced that he was retired from over the board play in May 2025.
Jan Hendrik Timman 1951-2026
Jan Timman was born in Amsterdam 14th December 1951 and died 18th February 2026. Timman learned to play at the age of 8 and became Dutch Junior Champion at 14, he finished 3rd in the World Juniors in 1967. In 1971 he became an IM and in 1974 a GM. 1974 was also the first of his nine Netherlands national titles (1974, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1987 and 1996).
World Championship Cycle
Timman suffered early frustrations in the World Championship cycle, whilst Karpov, also born in 1951, became a Candidate in 1974 and champion in 1975, things wouldn't happen as fast for Timman, the first of his Interzonal appearances was in 1979 and he only became a Candidate in 1986. By that time Timman had earned the title "Best in the West", he peaked at world number 2 in the January 1982 FIDE rating list, although he fell out of the top 10 occasionally he was a regular there until the early 1990s.
He shared first in the Amsterdam 1978 Zonal with Tony Miles to qualify for the 1979 Rio de Janeiro interzonal where he just missed out on the Candidates. The 1982 Las Palmas Interzonal was a comparative failure. 1985 he won the Taxco Interzonal but he lost to Artur Yusupov in the first round of the Candidates. Next time around was his first deep run in the Candidates beating Valeri Salov, Lajos Portisch and Jonathan Speelman before losing to Karpov in the final in 1990. The following cycle he beat Robert Huebner, Viktor Korchnoi and Artur Yusupov, but lost to Nigel Short in the final in 1993.
With Kasparov and Short taking their match outside FIDE he was drafted in to play a match against Anatoly Karpov for the FIDE World Chess Championship title. This was Timman's big chance over a 24 game match played in Zwolle, Arnhem, Amsterdam, and Jakarta in September to November 1993. Karpov's huge experience of such matches and big rating advantage by then meant that it was a comfortable 12.5-8.5 win for Karpov.
There was a first round loss in the Candidates in 1996 and unsuccessful appearances in the FIDE KOs in 1998 and 1999 and so after an extremely successful period throughout the 80s and into the mid-90s Timman's career as he entered his 50s declined markedly.
Other Key results
Key tournament wins: Hastings 1973/74 shared first with Tal, Kuzmin, and Szabo, Sombor 1974 (with Boris Gulko), Netanya 1975, Reykjavík 1976 (with Olafsson), Amsterdam IBM 1978, Niksic 1978, Bled/Portoroz 1979, IBM chess tournament in Amsterdam 1981, Hoogovens tournament in Wijk aan Zee (1981 and 1985), OHRA Amsterdam (1984), Interpolis Tilburg 1987, Linares 1988, VSB Amsterdam (1987 and 1989), World Cup Rotterdam 1989, Immopar Rapid 1991 mentioned above and Donner Memorial 1995 (with Granda Zuniga).
Dutch National team
He played in 13 Olympiads 1972-2004 11 times as board 1, Gold medal in 1976 on board 1. 2005 he was part of the Dutch team that won European championship in Gothenburg alongside Loek van Wely, Ivan Sokolov, Sergej Tiviakov and Erik van den Doel.
Writing and Studies
Jan Timman continued to be a hugely important figure in Western chess outside of his play. He was the first editor of New in Chess (1984), he published The Art of Chess Analysis (RHM 1980), Timman's Selected Games (1995), Timman's Titans (2017) and The Art of the Endgame (My journeys in the Magical World Endgame Studies) in 2011. This is just a small selection of his highly regarded output.
Personal life
Timman studied mathematics following in the footsteps of his parents before taking up chess full time. The novel 'Secret Love' by Laurie Langenbach is based on his Bohemian lifestyle in the 1970s. In 1978 he met and married the Surinamese psychologist Ilse-Marie Dorff, they have two children, Dehlia and Arthur. Timman and Dorff divorced at the end of the 1990s and he later married chess player Geertje Dirkse.
Peter Doggers Chess.com Obituary
Jan Timman (1951-2026) - Read Peter Doggers' comprehensive obituary for chess.com
Sources
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