Jan Timman, a Dutch chess grandmaster who for two decades was widely considered the best player outside the Soviet Union, and then Russia, before he lost the World Chess Championship in 1993, died on Feb. 18 at his home in Arnhem, the Netherlands. He was 74.
His death was announced by the International Chess Federation, also known as FIDE, the game’s governing body. No cause was given.
The news of Mr. Timman’s death brought tributes from around the world. Judit Polgar, a Hungarian chess grandmaster and the only woman to be ranked in the top 10 players in the world, wrote on X, “I respected his chess, his artistic vision of chess as a practical player and as a chess composer, and respected his character.”
Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, recalled how Mr. Timman had once beaten him — in the final match of a 1991 tournament in Paris — something that most of the world’s top players had never managed to do.
Mr. Timman rose to prominence in the mid-1970s by winning or tying for first place in a string of elite international tournaments, including in Hastings, England, in 1973-74; Sombor, Serbia, in 1974; Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1976; Amsterdam, in 1978; and Bled/Portoroz, Yugoslavia, in 1979.
In a game that relies on logic and meticulous planning, Mr. Timman’s success did not necessarily result from discipline. He called himself “lazy” and freely consumed alcohol and drugs early in his career. Chess.com described him as a “bon vivant.”
In his book “Timman’s Triumphs: My Best 100 Games” (2020), he recounted what happened when he made an effort to change his ways in preparation for a tournament in 1971: He lost the first five games.
Consequently, he wrote, “I decided to make a U-turn. My nights were full of alcohol abuse again, and this had a positive effect on my play. Without this pressure to perform, things went much better, and I gained 6 1/2 points in my next 8 games.”
Despite his laissez-faire attitude, Mr. Timman was a fearless and dynamic competitor. Unlike most top players of the era, who preferred to stick to a few openings they knew well, he employed a wide variety of opening strategies. Knowing what his opponents might play, he would allow them to steer the games into familiar territory and would then fight them on their own turf.
Thanks to his immense talent, this risky strategy often succeeded. Mr. Timman reached his peak ranking of No. 2 in the world in January 1982, trailing only Anatoly Karpov, the world champion from Russia.
He seemed poised to make a run for the world title, but as he wrote in the introduction to his book “The Longest Game” (2019), about the world championship games between Mr. Karpov and Mr. Kasparov that dominated the 1980s, he failed to qualify for the matches leading up to the 1984 World Chess Championship because he was “tortured by sleeping problems.”
Eventually he did qualify, and in 1990 he reached the final match, losing to Mr. Karpov. Three years later, Mr. Timman again reached the final round, this time losing to Nigel Short of England, who thus earned the right to face Mr. Kasparov for the title.
But Mr. Kasparov and Mr. Short decided to organize the match without FIDE, to increase the cash prize. (The Times of London had offered significantly more money than the sponsor FIDE had chosen, and FIDE wouldn’t be taking a 20 percent share of the money.) The federation retaliated by excommunicating them and declaring that Mr. Kasparov, who beat Mr. Short in their match, did not hold the title of world champion.
FIDE organized its own title match, pitting Mr. Timman against Mr. Karpov, who had lost to Mr. Short in the semifinal match. Mr. Karpov won by 12.5 to 8.5 points, making him the FIDE world champion, though most people continued to recognize Mr. Kasparov as the legitimate titleholder.
The loss to Mr. Karpov more or less marked the end of Mr. Timman’s peak as a player, although he continued to compete and sometimes win elite tournaments in the 2000s.
Jan Hendrik Timman was born on Dec. 14, 1951, in Amsterdam. He was the third of four children of Reinier Timman, a mathematics professor at the Delft University of Technology, and Anneke Timman, who studied mathematics under Max Euwe, the fifth world chess champion.
Jan was expected to study mathematics, as his parents had done. But his older brother Ton taught him how to play chess, and by the time Jan was 11, he was winning tournaments. When he was 15, he took third place in the 1967 World Youth Chess Championship.
Mr. Timman became an international master in 1971. By 1974, the year he won the first of his nine Dutch championships, he had become a grandmaster, the game’s highest title — making him the third grandmaster in the history of the Netherlands, after Mr. Euwe and Jan Hein Donner. He represented his country in the biennial Chess Olympiad 13 times, and, in 1976, he won the gold medal as the Board 1, or top-ranked, player with the highest score.
Mr. Timman recorded victories over multiple world champions — not only Mr. Kasparov, but also Mr. Karpov, Boris Spassky, Vasily Smyslov and Mikhail Tal.
As his career progressed, Mr. Timman inspired a new generation of players, helping to create a chess renaissance in the Netherlands, which is currently No. 9 in the world rankings among countries, with more than a dozen grandmasters.
In 1984, Mr. Timman became the first editor of New in Chess, one of the most popular chess magazines, and he wrote 16 books, including “The Art of Chess Analysis” (1980), which is considered a classic. In his later years, he concentrated on what are known as endgame studies, exercises in which the object is to find the one and only move that will allow a player to win or gain a decisive advantage.
Mr. Timman’s first marriage, to Ilse-Marie Dorff, ended in divorce. He is survived by Geertje Dirkse, whom he married in 2003; two children from his first marriage, Arthur and Dehlia Timman, the former chairwoman of the Centrum district of Amsterdam; and two siblings, Yolande Belghazi-Timman and Reinier Timman. His brother Ton died in 2014.
Mr. Timman’s parents may have hoped that he would become a mathematician, but that dream was most likely doomed from the start.
In another book, “The Narrow Way” (1988), he explained why he preferred being a professional chess player. “There are no school desks or college halls, there’s no pressure to get up early, no duty to give account for anything,” he wrote. “A triumphant feeling takes possession of you. You are your own boss, governed only by your own abilities.”
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