Las Palmas 1981

Cut down to a six-player double round robin, the 1981 Las Palmas tournament belonged to Jan Timman, then at the height of his powers. The Dutchman went through the ten rounds unbeaten, scoring 8½/10 to finish two full points clear of Bent Larsen, with Viktor Korchnoi and Yasser Seirawan a point further back.

◇Six men, ten rounds

After a decade of big round-robins, the 1981 edition took a different shape: six players meeting twice each, thirty games in all. Four were world-class — Jan Timman, the Danish fighter Bent Larsen, Viktor Korchnoi, and the 21-year-old American Yasser Seirawan, world junior champion of 1979 — with Spain's Juan Manuel Bellón López and the Canarian José García Padrón completing the field.

The tournament carried an undercurrent of the world-championship cycle: Korchnoi was months away from his second title match against Anatoly Karpov at Merano, and Seirawan — who beat Korchnoi in their individual game in Las Palmas — would serve as one of the challenger's seconds at that very match.

◇Timman's year

Timman dominated: seven wins, three draws, no losses, 8½ from 10. Larsen took second on 6½, Korchnoi edged Seirawan for third with 6 apiece, and the two Spaniards were overwhelmed on 1½ each.

It was one peak in an extraordinary stretch for the Dutchman, who also won Wijk aan Zee and the final IBM tournament in Amsterdam that same year. Known as The Best of the West — the strongest player outside the Soviet Union — Timman would be ranked second in the world, behind only Karpov, by 1982.