Mikhail Tal

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Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal (Михаил Нехемиевич Тал) (November 9 1936 - June 28 1992), born in Riga, Latvia, was the eighth World Chess Champion.

Known as the "Magician from Riga", Tal excelled in tactical attacks. He often gave up material in exchange for the initiative—in chess defined as the ability to make threats to which the opponent must respond.

Tal's playing style was scorned by ex-World Champion Vassily Smyslov as nothing more than "tricks," yet he convincingly beat every notable grandmaster with his trademark aggression. Tal's intuitive sacrifices created vast complications, and many masters found it impossible to solve all the problems he created over the board, though deeper post-game analysis often found flaws in his conceptions. Tal became a spectator favourite.

Tal's dominance over Bobby Fischer in his early years helped his rise to the top. In 1960, at the age of 24, Tal defeated the relatively staid and strategic Mikhail Botvinnik in a World Championship match, making him the youngest ever world champion (a record later broken by Kasparov, who earned the title at 22). Botvinnik won the return match against Tal in 1961 after a lengthy study of Tal's style. Tal's chronic kidney problems may also have contributed to his defeat.

One of Tal's greatest achievements during his later career was an equal first place with Anatoly Karpov in the 1979 Montreal "Tournament of Stars" - there he delivered a superb performance against many of the strongest grandmasters of the day.

Of the current top-level players, the Latvian-born Spaniard Alexei Shirov has probably been most influenced or inspired by Tal's sacrificial style (In fact, he studied with Tal as a youth). Many other Latvian grandmasters and masters, for instance Alexander Shabalov and Alvis Vitolins, have played in a similar vein, causing some to speak of a "Latvian School of Chess."

Quotes

• "If you wait for luck to turn up, life becomes very boring."
• "There are two types of sacrifices - sound ones and mine."
• "Chess is better than checkers. In the very least it has a more interesting cast of characters."

Further reading

• Twelve Great Chess Players and Their Best Games by Irving Chernev; Dover; August 1995. ISBN 0486286746

External link

• Tal's games at muljadi.org

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