He first competed for the
Yugoslav Championship in 1979, taking a share of second place. The following year and again in 1984, he went one step further and became the Yugoslav national champion. He was awarded the
International Master and
Grandmaster titles in 1980 and 1983 respectively. The GM title was earned from his 1982 performances in
Sarajevo (third) and
Sochi (second after
Mikhail Tal). He was a winner at Sarajevo in 1983, at
Novi Sad in 1984 and at
Reykjavík two years later. 1986 was also the year that he shared second place behind
Nigel Short at
Wijk aan Zee. He returned to winning ways at Sarajevo in 1987 and at the
Zagreb Interzonal, narrowly failed to qualify for the
Candidates Tournament (sharing fourth place behind
Korchnoi,
Ehlvest and
Seirawan). In 1989, he won at
Wijk aan Zee (jointly with
Anand,
Ribli and
Sax) and took first place at
Portorož/
Ljubljana (the
Vidmar Memorial tournament). There followed the 1990 Interzonal in
Manila, where once more he shared fourth place, but qualified this time for the 1991 Candidates tournament. During his 'final 16' encounter with
Boris Gelfand, he was just edged out in a rapid play-off, having drawn the match 4-4.. There were more tournament victories to come; first at Wijk aan Zee in 1994 and as winner of the national
Dutch Chess Championships of 1997 (equal with
Jan Timman but winning the play-off) and 1999. In 2004, he shared a major success with
Vassily Ivanchuk when they tied for first place at the
European Individual Chess Championship, held in
Antalya, although he lost the play-off for the title. Predrag Nikolić is now living in the Netherlands near Leiden, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ==Notable games==