Predrag Nikolić
Predrag Nikolić ( born September 11, 1960 in Bosanski Šamac, Yugoslavia ) is a Bosnian chess player.
Nikolić played first time in 1979 in the Yugoslav championship and shared space 2 to 4 A year later, he won the national championship in 1984 and repeated his success. In 1980, he first played for the Yugoslavian national team at the Chess Olympiad in Malta, the same year he received from the FIDE awarded the title of International Master. In 1983 he became Grand Master in the same year and won the tournament in Sarajevo. 1984 won Nikolić in Novi Sad, 1986 in Reykjavík, in 1987 again in Sarajevo. Interzonal of Zagreb, he just missed qualifying for the Candidates Tournament and was divided 4 to 6, 1989, he won together with Viswanathan Anand, Zoltán Ribli and Gyula Sax, the traditional tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the same year he won the Vidmar Memorial in Portorož / Ljubljana.
Interzonal of Manila in 1990 he for the first time succeeded in qualifying for the Candidates Tournament: He shared space 4 to 11 In the second round the candidate struggles he resigned in 1991 in Sarajevo against Boris Gelfand from. The match ended 4:4 ( 2, -2, = 4), but Gelfand won by the two-sample games in rapid chess one, while the other was a draw. In the same year Nikolić defeated in a contest in São Paulo the sensational return to chess returned Brazilian Henrique da Costa Mecking with 3,5:2,5 ( 1, -0 = 5). Also in 1991 he won the prestigious Tournament of Bled and Rogaska Slatina.
During his stay at the tournament in Buenos Aires 1992 ( 2nd place), the civil war broke out in Yugoslavia. Nikolić then took his new residence in 1993, together with the Bosnian Ivan Sokolov, in the Netherlands. In 1994, he won again in Wijk aan Zee and participated in 1997 at the Dutch national championship, when he first was in Rotterdam with Jan Timman. The subsequent playoff won Nikolić with 2.5:1.5 ( 1, -0 = 3), also in Rotterdam. In 1998 he was again winner of the national championship of third parties, 1999. Nikolić, who lives on the Chess Olympiads of Bosnia and Herzegovina but still competes in the Netherlands ( Oegstgeest ), participated in no other championships of his host country. In 2002 and 2003 he won in Selfoss, each together with his compatriot Ivan Sokolov. In 2004 he celebrated the biggest success of his career when he won the European Championship in Antalya together with Vasyl Ivanchuk. The subsequent tie-break rapid chess lost the Bosnians but with 0:2. In 2007 he was a Bosnian national champion in Sarajevo.
Nikolić played for several years in the chess Bundesliga for the chess society Solingen, in the Croatian championship team he plays for the team from Osijek.
His current Elo rating is 2598, he is so behind Borki Predojević in second place of the Bosnian Elo ranking, which he had led for a long time (as of January 2011). He had his highest ever Elo rating of 2676 in October 2004.