Szirak 1987 Interzonal

◈One of three gates to the Candidates

For the 1988–1990 cycle FIDE split the Interzonal into three separate tournaments — Subotica, Szirák, and Zagreb — each a round-robin feeding qualifiers into the Candidates matches, whose winner would challenge World Champion Garry Kasparov. Szirák gathered eighteen grandmasters in Hungary for a seventeen-round round-robin.

Three places from Szirák led onward to the Candidates. Jóhann Hjartarson of Iceland and Valery Salov of the Soviet Union shared first on 12½/17 and both qualified directly. Lajos Portisch and John Nunn tied for third a half-point behind on 12/17, which left a single qualifying spot to be decided between the two of them.

◈The Budapest play-off

Level on the round-robin, Portisch and Nunn met afterwards in a separate play-off in Budapest for the final Candidates place. Portisch, the veteran Hungarian grandmaster, won the match 4–2 to claim the spot; Nunn was eliminated.

Those play-off games were later archived together with the tournament, which is why the computed cross-table on this page overstates Portisch's and Nunn's totals — the extra games belong to the Budapest match, not to Szirák. On the round-robin proper each of them scored 12/17.

◈Breakthroughs

Szirák proved a springboard for its joint winners. Hjartarson carried his qualification into the Candidates and pulled off a celebrated upset, ousting the great Viktor Korchnoi 4½–3½ at Saint John in early 1988, while Salov established himself as a fixture of Soviet elite chess. For Portisch, then in his fifties, it was another chapter in a career of Candidates appearances stretching back to the 1960s.