diagonal: 60 years, Happy Birthday, GM Predrag Nikolic!
Peak ranking as <no. 6= of the world> in 1988 (January to July list), behind only dominating Kasparov on top, and Karpov, the two players above 2700 Elo, followed by Timman, Beliavsky, and Korchnoi, together with Short and Tal at Elo 2630. Big names indeed!
Peak rating much later in 2004 and 2005 at Elo 2676, out of top twenty.
Nikolic <won twice at the traditional and prestigious Wijk aan Zee>: in 1994 as clear first ahead of Tiviakov (ten players, top seeded: I. Sokolov) and 1989, shared with Ribli, Sax, and young Anand (14 players, top seeded: Ribli), both editions weren't that powerful, compared to other Wijk aan Zee tournaments.
Nikolic also <won twice at Bosna>, then a pretty strong international invitation tournament at Sarajevo, in 1983 (clear first ahead of Smejkal, Adorjan, Kurajica, including Gligoric, 16 players), and in 1987 (clear first 1.5 points ahead of Vaganian, Polugaevsky, followed by Miles, Seirawan, etc., twelve players, this was his best career performance according to Chessmetrics by Sonas). In addition, Nikolic was later several times (co-)winner of the Open at Sarajevo, which has now a more local character (Bosna series switched format).
National Championships: Predrag Nikolic is a two times <Champion of former Yugoslavia>, two times <Champion of The Netherlands>, and once (at least) a <Champion of Bosnia and Herzegovina>.
At the Interzonal in Zagreb in 1987, Nikolic narrowly failed to qualify for the Candidate's, sharing fourth place behind Korchnoi, who won at age of 56 (the oldest player ever to win an Interzonal), and joint runners-up Ehlvest and Seirawan, three players to advance.
In the following cycle, at the Interzonal in Manila in 1990, played in swiss system, Nikolic <qualified for the Candidate's>.
In his 1/7-final (Karpov was seeded directly) in January / February 1991 in Sarajevo, Nikolic tied Gelfand (4-4, two wins, two losses, four draws), but was just edged out in the rapid play-off (5.5-4.5 end result). Boris Gelfand then was the clear no. 3 of the world.
<World Senior Chess Champion (section 50+) in 2015> at age of 55.
This year, in early Spring 2020, Predrag Nikolic won a veteran’s Quadrangular, the “Old Masters Rapid Tournament”, it was held over a weekend alongside the 80th Daniel Noteboom Memorial in Leiden, the Netherlands. Participants were Hübner (the nestor of the group, 72 years), Karpov, Timman (both 69), and Nikolic (60). Nikolic went undefeated at 4.5/6, he beat Timman twice and Karpov once in the double round-robin event.
Kibitzing
