Lajos Portisch

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Lajos Portisch is a Hungarian chess player, born in 1937, whose positional style earned him the nickname of the "Hungarian Botvinnik". One of the strongest non-Soviet grandmasters in the 1960s and 1970s, he participated in 12 straight Interzonals and qualified for the candidates cycle 5 times. In these matches he was not very successful: he lost in the first round against Tal in 1965, Larsen in 1968 and Petrosian in 1974. In 1977 he advanced to the semifinals after beating Larsen, but he then lost to Spassky. He got his revenge in 1980, when he tied the quarterfinal match against Spassky 7-7 and advanced to the semifinals since he had more victories with black. There he lost to Robert Hubner.

Among his many successes, one could cite the tournament of Skopje/Ohrid in 1968, ahead of Geller and Polugaevsky and with a score of 14/19, 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 Hubner and Geller).

He also led the Hungarian chess team to the gold in the 23rd Chess Olympiad held in Buenos Aires with a personal score of 10/14. This was the only Olympiad not to be won by the Soviet Union between 1952 and 1990.