Lajos Portisch 70
4 April 2007 11:18 AM | Last modified: 10:19
Because of the Dresden hitch, now for some calendar trivia. Chess Today pinpoints that today exactly fifteen years ago Samuel Reshevsky passed away. More happy news On a happier note legendary Hungarian chess player Lajos Portisch celebrates is 70th birthday today. In the sixties and seventies he belonged to the world elite, playing many interzonals and qualifying for the world championship title no less than five times. For his country Hungary he played in twenty (!) Olympiads; they won the 1978 Buenos Aires edition where Portisch scored 10 out of 14.
From Wikipedia: “Among his many successes, one could cite the tournament of Skopje/Ohrid in 1968, ahead of Geller and Polugaevsky and with a score of fourteen points out of a possible nineteen; Hastings 1971, Wijk aan Zee (ahead of Vassily Smyslov), Las Palmas and San Antonio in 1972 (tied with Karpov and Petrosian) and Wijk aan Zee 1975 (ahead of Hübner and Geller).”
On this day, bringing the following game seems appropriate:
Your article suggests that Reshevsky’s passing was good news. You might want to correct that gaffe.
“Chess Today pinpoints that today exactly fifteen years ago Samuel Reshevsky passed away. On a happier note (instead of “more happy news” ) legendary Hungarian chess player Lajos Portisch celebrates is 70th birthday ….”
Thanks Rob, I fully agree with you.
Portisch is also a very accomplished operatic baritone. He sung (http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3053) Santa Lucia at one of his previous celebrations. Unfortunately, the link to his performance from that page no longer works.