Jon Speelman at 70: The Candidates Run Behind a Quiet Career

Grandmaster Jonathan Speelman turns 70 on 2 October 2026. ChessBase marks the birthday with a career review of a player who reached the Candidates semifinals, climbed as high as joint fourth in the world and then became one of chess’s more readable analysts.

His record is easy to understate. He was born in Marylebone, London, in 1956, studied mathematics at Worcester College, Oxford, and left in 1977 to play professionally. He became an IM in 1978 and a GM in 1980, just as England’s strongest generation was forming.

A peak that came in two parts

His highest rating, 2645, came in July 1988, when he stood fifth in the world. By January 1989 he had slipped to 2640, but his ranking had improved to joint fourth, the best of his career. The rating peak and the ranking peak landed on different lists, a small quirk of how the numbers fell.

The early signs were there. He won the British Under-14 title in 1969 and shared the Under-16 title in 1970. In 1978 he won his first British Championship, and he was in the England team that won the World Under-26 Team Championship in Mexico City, finishing ahead of the Soviet Union.

He won the British title again in 1985 and 1986. That is three national crowns in a domestic field that included Tony Miles, John Nunn and Nigel Short, which makes them harder to win than the bare count suggests.

The Candidates run

Speelman shared first at Dortmund in 1981 and at Hastings in 1983/84. He shared first again at Hastings in 1986/87, undefeated. At Be’er Sheva in 1987 he shared first with 8½/11, also unbeaten.

Then came the 1987 Subotica Interzonal, where he tied for first with Gyula Sax and Nigel Short. That earned him a Candidates place. In January 1988 in Saint John, Canada, he beat Yasser Seirawan 4-1.

The quarterfinal in London that August was an all-English affair against Short, and Speelman won 3½-1½. It ranks among the best individual achievements of his career.

The semifinal against Jan Timman, in London in October 1989, was far tighter. Timman prevailed 4½-3½, one point of margin deciding a match between two of the era’s sharpest endgame thinkers. Speelman later wrote a column on their battles after Timman’s death, recalling him as “one of the very nicest” of the generation slightly older than his own.

The reverse came in the next cycle. In the first round in January-February 1991, Short beat him 5½-4½, a closer result than the one Speelman had enjoyed in 1988. The pair of matches with Short, each decided by a single point or more in opposite directions, reads like a handover of English chess leadership.

Olympiads and the long haul

Speelman played in every Olympiad from 1980 through 2006. England took silver behind the Soviet Union at Thessaloniki 1984, Dubai 1986 and Thessaloniki 1988. At Dubai he scored 7/9 as first reserve, with five wins and four draws, and took an individual silver. Two years later on board two he scored 8½/12.

He added 8/12 at both Novi Sad 1990 and Moscow 1994. In 1997 he was part of the England side that won the European Team Championship in Pula, alongside Short, Michael Adams, Matthew Sadler and Julian Hodgson.

The writer

His second career is what many younger fans know. He is closely associated with endgame work through Analysing the Endgame, Endgame Preparation and, as co-author, Batsford Chess Endings. He also wrote for The Observer and The Independent. His playing style was known for unconventional strategic ideas and tactical resourcefulness, which probably suits a writer who likes to explain why a quiet move works.

His ChessBase column has reached at least 243 instalments. In #132 he argued that an exchange sacrifice usually needs other pieces on the board to work. In #147 he called the tense moment before battle “perhaps the most difficult moment psychologically”, using a Magnus Carlsen game as the example.

The latest instalment was published a couple of weeks before the ChessBase article, so the column keeps running into his eighth decade.