Jan Timman was already an outstanding prospect in his early teens, and at Jerusalem 1967 played in the World Junior Championship, aged fifteen, finishing third.

Timman received the International Master title in 1971, and in 1974 attained Grandmaster status, making him the Netherlands' third after Max Euwe and Jan Hein Donner.

[4] A string of victories quickly followed at Sombor 1974 (with Boris Gulko), Netanya 1975, Reykjavík 1976 (with Fridrik Olafsson), Amsterdam IBM 1978, Nikšić 1978,[5] and Bled/Portorož 1979.

One of his notable later successes was the 2nd Immopar Rapid Tournament in 1991, a weekend event which attracted a huge amount of prize money.

In this knock-out format tournament he defeated Gata Kamsky 1½–½, Karpov 2–0, Viswanathan Anand 1½–½, and finally the World Champion Garry Kasparov 1½–½ to win the first prize of approximately 75,000 USD.

In the next cycle, after winning the 1987 Tilburg Interzonal he defeated Valery Salov, Lajos Portisch, and Jonathan Speelman, but lost in the final to Anatoly Karpov in 1990.

He reached the final round once again in 1993, having defeated Robert Hübner, Viktor Korchnoi, and Yusupov, but lost this time to Nigel Short.

[9] Raymond Keene described Timman's playing style as that of "a fighter, in the mould of Emanuel Lasker".

When he first reached the world class level in the 1970s, this was relatively unusual, with most elite grandmasters deploying a more narrowly focused range of openings, but it is now the norm.