English Chess Forum

Reported by Douglas Griffin

Very sad news ECU

I was thinking of him the other day, albeit in the less fortunate sense that Chessbase published a list of the top 50 all-time players whose games an AI engine found most "attractive", and I noticed that Short and Timman did not feature. (Hardest of all to understand, nor did Ivanchuk).

I had the impression that Timman was very competitive (and ambitious) at the top of world chess, yet without anyone outside the Netherlands thinking that he quite had it in him to be world champion. His sense of danger was, at that elite level, not exactly the highest. I wonder whether he was also too much a romantic/adventurer/enthusiast to quite challenge the leading players (witnessed by his interest in studies, long annotations of games and analysis of annotations of others, and occasional opening experiments).

Anyway - a character, like many Dutch players. Condolences to those who knew him.

Jan Hendrik Timman (14 December 1951 – 18 February 2026)

A brilliant man as well as a world class player at his peak. Loved chess all his life.

RIP.

RIP Jan, a true gentleman.

Was tweeting about chess just a couple of days ago, so whilst he did have health problems this was very much sudden and unexpected.

Did anybody here ever meet or even get to play against timman? I remember his name being one of great reverence even in the late 90s when I first started playing so presume he must have had links to UK chess

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:30 pm

Did anybody here ever meet or even get to play against timman? I remember his name being one of great reverence even in the late 90s when I first started playing so presume he must have had links to UK chess

Not particularly i think? Got to remember that pre 1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the post USSR “invasion”, the best players in the West really were massive figures universally revered in the Western chess world. Timman i guess probably best known (as a player anyway) in the U.K. for his candidates matches against Speelman and Short (and of course being on the receiving end of the famous king march against the latter!).

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:30 pm

Did anybody here ever meet or even get to play against timman? I remember his name being one of great reverence even in the late 90s when I first started playing so presume he must have had links to UK chess

He played a Candidates match against John Speelman and the Short-Timman king walk game is well known.

This Dutch chess documentary (English subs) is from 1979, probably around Timman's peak. He's covered quite a bit and it includes how he prepped for games etc. There's funny moment when Timman, Hans Ree & Ulf Andersson are chatting in Timman's house about players enjoying their opponent's suffering. Timman puts Ulf Andersson on the spot by asking him if he enjoyed games like the position on the board (Andersson v Robatsch, 1979) where his opponent is totally helpless. Andersson laughs and said yes and he's sometimes disappointed when his opponent resigns too early. https://youtu.be/E48r-JTSAVM?si=QH3sRIF44eHTxbt5&t=1047

Edward Winter's website includes an article entitled "Jan Timman (1951-2026)", which includes images of a couple of handwritten letters from Timman and other interesting material:

https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/timman.html

TWIC

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.

Richard Bates wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 19, 2026 3:11 pm

Joey Stewart wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 19, 2026 2:30 pm

Did anybody here ever meet or even get to play against timman? I remember his name being one of great reverence even in the late 90s when I first started playing so presume he must have had links to UK chess

Not particularly i think? Got to remember that pre 1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the post USSR “invasion”, the best players in the West really were massive figures universally revered in the Western chess world. Timman i guess probably best known (as a player anyway) in the U.K. for his candidates matches against Speelman and Short (and of course being on the receiving end of the famous king march against the latter!).

I think he was in the UK a fair amount in the 1980s (Phillips and Drew, for a start). Oddly I think he might have taken a long break from playing here since he beat Speelman in 1989 - although play again he certainly did (e.g. he played a round robin event at Simpsons in the Strand in 2009, while five younger Dutch players played a match against the top English players). He never played 4NCL.

Jonathan Rogers wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 19, 2026 9:02 pm

I think he was in the UK a fair amount in the 1980s (Phillips and Drew, for a start).

In his junior days, he would play for the Netherlands in the Glorney Cup when they participated. Also he played in the annual Anglo-Dutch match.
Details can be found at the britbase site. https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/

He also played in weekenders, winning the Islington Open in 1970 ahead of any number of familiar names.
https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html

It's not on britbase but I think he also played in the Manchester Open either in that year or the previous one. I don't think he did quite as well in that.