Vlastimil Hort

Who is Vlastimil Hort?

Vlastimil Hort is a Czech-born German chess Grandmaster. During the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the world's strongest players and reached the 1977–78 Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship, but never qualified for a competition for the actual title.

Hort was born in Kladno, Czechoslovakia and was a citizen of Czechoslovakia for the first part of his chess career, winning national championships in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1975, and 1977. He achieved the Grandmaster title in 1965 as a Czechoslovak citizen. While playing for Czechoslovakia he won a number of major tournaments, gaining recognition as one of the strongest non-Soviet players in the world. This led to him representing the "World" team in the great "USSR vs. Rest of the World" match of 1970, where he occupied fourth board and had a +1 score against the Soviet Grandmaster Lev Polugaevsky—in some regards his greatest result. He defected to the West after the 1985 Tunis Interzonal, moving to West Germany and winning the national championship of his new homeland in 1987, 1989, and 1991.