Mikhail Tal

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Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Tal in 1982
Full name Latvian: Mihails Tls
Russian:
Country Soviet Union (Latvia)
Born 9 November 1936
Riga, Latvia
Died 28 June 1992
[1]
(aged 55)
Moscow, Russia
Title Grandmaster (1957)
World Champion 196061
Peak rating 2705 (January 1980)
Mikhail Tal (Latvian: Mihails Tls; Russian: ,Michail Nechem'evi
Tal, pronounced

]; sometimes transliterated Mihails Tals or Mihail Tal; 9

November 1936 28 June 1992)
[1]
was a Soviet-Latvian chess Grandmaster and the eighth World
Chess Champion (from 1960 to 1961).
Widely regarded as a creative genius and the best attacking player of all time, he played in a daring,
combinatorial style.
[2][3]
His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability. Every
game, he once said, was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem.
[4]
He was often called "Misha",
a diminutive for Mikhail, and "The magician from Riga". Both The Mammoth Book of the World's
Greatest Chess Games
[5]
and Modern Chess Brilliancies
[6]
include more games by Tal than any other
player. Tal was also a highly regarded chess writer. He also holds the records for both the first and
second longest unbeaten streaks in competitive chess history.
[7]

The Mikhail Tal Memorial has been held in Moscow annually since 2006 to honour Tal's memory.
Contents
[hide]
1 Early years
2 Personality
3 Soviet champion
4 World champion
5 Later achievements
6 Team competitions
7 Tournament and match wins (or equal first)
o 7.1 195066
o 7.2 196779
o 7.3 198191
8 Score with some major grandmasters
9 Health problems
10 Playing style
11 Notable games
12 Writings
13 References
14 Further reading
15 External links
Early years[edit]
Tal was born in Riga, Latvia, into a Jewish family.
[8]
According to his friend Gennadi Sosonko, his
true father was a family friend identified only as "Uncle Robert";
[9]
however, this was vehemently
denied by Tal's third wife Angelina.
[10]
From the very beginning of his life, he suffered from ill health.
Tal learned to read at the age of three, and was allowed to start university studies while only fifteen.
At the age of eight, Tal learned to play chess while watching his father, a doctor and medical
researcher. After Mikhail Botvinnik became the world chess champion, in 1948, while in Riga after
the tournament, Tal, then eleven years old, visited
[vague]
, hoping to play a game against the new
champion. Tal met Botvinnik's wife, who said the champion was asleep, and that she had made him
take a rest from chess.
[citation needed]
Shortly thereafter he joined the Riga Palace of Young
Pioneers chess club. His play was not exceptional at first but he worked hard to improve.Alexander
Koblents began tutoring Tal in 1949, after which Tal's game rapidly improved, and by 1951 he had
qualified for the Latvian Championship. In the 1952 Latvian Championship Tal finished ahead of his
trainer. Tal won his first Latvian title in 1953, and was awarded the title of Candidate Master. He
became a Soviet Master in 1954 by defeating Vladimir Saigin in a qualifying match. That same year
he also scored his first win over a Grandmaster when Yuri Averbakh lost on time in adrawn position.
Tal graduated in Literature from the University of Riga, writing a thesis on the satirical works of Ilf
and Petrov, and taught school in Riga for a time in his early twenties. He was a member of the
Daugava Sports Society, and represented Latvia in internal Soviet team competitions.
He married 19-year-old Russian actress Salli Landau in 1959, divorcing in 1970. (In 2003, Landau
published in Russia a biography of her late ex-husband.)
Personality[edit]
His first wife, Salli Landau, described Mikhail's personality:
Misha was so ill-equipped for living... When he travelled to a tournament, he couldn't even pack his
own suitcase... He didn't even know how to turn on the gas for cooking. If I had a headache, and
there happened to be no one home but him, he would fall into a panic: "How do I make a hot-water
bottle?" And when I got behind the wheel of a car, he would look at me as though I were a visitor
from another planet. Of course, if he had made some effort, he could have learned all of this. But it
was all boring to him. He just didn't need to. A lot of people have said that if Tal had looked after his
health, if he hadn't led such a dissolute life... and so forth. But with people like Tal, the idea of "if
only" is just absurd. He wouldn't have been Tal then.
[11]

Soviet champion[edit]
Tal first qualified for the USSR Chess Championship final in 1956, finishing joint fifth, and became
the youngest player to win it the following year, at the age of 20. He had not played in enough
international tournaments to qualify for the title ofGrandmaster, but FIDE decided at its 1957
Congress to waive the normal restrictions and award him the title because of his achievement in
winning the Soviet Championship. At that time, the Soviet Union was dominant in world chess, and
Tal had beaten several of the world's top players to win the tournament.
[12]

Tal made three appearances for the USSR at Student Olympiads in 195658, winning three team
gold medals and three board gold medals. He won nineteen games, drew eight, and lost none, for
85.2 percent.
[13]

He retained the Soviet Championship title in 1958 at Riga, and competed in the World Chess
Championship for the first time. He won the 1958 Interzonal tournament at Pororo, then helped the
Soviet Union win their fourth consecutive Chess Olympiad at Munich.
World champion[edit]

Tal in 1962
Tal won a very strong tournament at Zrich, 1959. Following the Interzonal, the top players carried
on to the Candidates' Tournament, Yugoslavia 1959. Tal showed superior form by winning with
20/28 points, ahead of Paul Keres with 18, followed by Tigran Petrosian, Vasily Smyslov, Bobby
Fischer, Seozr Ggor, Fririk lafsson, and Pal Benko. Tal's victory was attributed to his
dominance over the lower half of the field;
[14]
whilst scoring only one win and three losses versus
Keres, he won all four individual games against Fischer, and took 3 points out of 4 from each of
Ggor, Ofsso, d Benko.
[15]

In 1960, at the age of 23, Tal thoroughly defeated the relatively staid and strategicMikhail
Botvinnik in a World Championship match, held in Moscow, by 128 (six wins, two losses, and
thirteen draws), making him the youngest-ever world champion (a record later broken by Garry
Kasparov, who earned the title at 22). Botvinnik, who had never faced Tal before the title match
began, won the return match against Tal in 1961, also held in Moscow, by 138 (ten wins to five,
with six draws). In the period between the matches Botvinnik had thoroughly analyzed Tal's style,
and turned most of the return match's games into slow wars of maneuver orendgames, rather than
the complicated tactical melees which were Tal's happy hunting ground.
[16]
Tal's chronic kidney
problems contributed to his defeat, and his doctors in Riga advised that he should postpone the
match for health reasons.Yuri Averbakh claimed that Botvinnik would agree to a postponement only
if Tal was certified unfit by Moscow doctors, and that Tal then decided to play.
[17]
His short reign atop
the chess world made him one of the two so-called "winter kings" who interrupted Botvinnik's long
reign from 1948 to 1963 (the other was Smyslov, world champion 195758).
His highest Elo rating was 2705, achieved in 1980. His highest Historical Chessmetrics Rating was
2799, in September 1960. This capped his torrid stretch, which had begun in early 1957.
Later achievements[edit]

Tal in 1988
Soon after losing the rematch with Botvinnik, Tal won the 1961 Bledsupertournament by one point
oer Fscher, despe osg her ddu ge, scorg 14 fro eee ges (+11 1 =7)
with the world-css pyers Tgr Peros, Keres, Ggor, Efim Geller, and Miguel
Najdorf among the other participants.
Tal played in a total of six Candidates' Tournaments and match cycles, though he never again
earned the right to play for the world title. In 1962 at Curaao, he had serious health problems,
having undergone a major operation shortly before the tournament, and had to withdraw three-
qurers of he wy hrough, scorg jus see pos (+3 10 =8) fro 21 ges. He ed for frs
place at the 1964Amsterdam Interzonal to advance to matches. Then in 1965, he lost the final match
against Boris Spassky, after defeating Lajos Portisch and Bent Larsen in matches. Exempt from the
1967 Interzonal, he lost a 1968 semifinal match against Viktor Korchnoi, after defeating Gligoric.
Poor health caused a slump in his play from late 1968 to late 1969, but he recovered his form after
having a kidney removed. He won the 1979 Riga Interzonal with an undefeated score of 14/17, but
the next year lost a quarter-final match toLev Polugaevsky, one of the players to hold a positive
score against him. He also played in the 1985 MontpellierCandidates' Tournament, a round-robin of
16 qualifiers, finishing in a tie for fourth and fifth places, and narrowly missing further advancement
after drawing a playoff match with Jan Timman, who held the tiebreak advantage from the
tournament proper.
From July 1972 to April 1973, Tal played a record 86 consecutive games without a loss (47 wins and
39 draws). Between 23 October 1973 and 16 October 1974, he played 95 consecutive games
without a loss (46 wins and 49 draws), shattering his previous record. These are the two longest
unbeaten streaks in modern chess history.
[7]

Tal remained a formidable opponent as he got older. He played Anatoli Karpov 22 times (12 of them
durg he er's reg s Word Chpo) wh record of +12=19.
One of Tal's greatest achievements during his later career was an equal first place with Karpov
(whom he seconded in a number of tournaments and world championships) in the
1979 Montreal "Toure of Srs", wh ubee score of (+6 0 =12), he oy udefeed
player in the field, which also included Spassky, Portisch, Vlastimil Hort, Robert Hbner,Ljubomir
Ljuboje, Lubomir Kavalek, Timman and Larsen.
Tal played in 21 Soviet Championships,
[18]
winning it six times (1957, 1958, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978).
He was also a five-time winner of the International Chess Tournament in Tallinn, Estonia, with
victories in 1971, 1973, 1977, 1981, and 1983.
Tal also had successes in blitz chess; in 1970, he took second place to Fischer, who scored 19/22,
in a blitz tournament atHerceg Novi, Yugoslavia, ahead of Korchnoi, Petrosian and Smyslov. In
1988, at the age of 51, he won the second official World Blitz Championship (the first was won by
Kasparov the previous year in Brussels) at Saint John, ahead of such players as Kasparov, the
reigning world champion, and ex-champion Anatoly Karpov. In the final, he defeated Rafael
Vaganian by 3.
On 28 May 1992, at the Moscow blitz tournament (which he left hospital to play), he defeated
Kasparov. He died one month later.
Team competitions[edit]
In Olympiad play, Mikhail Tal was a member of eight Soviet teams, each of which won team gold
medals (1958, 1960,1962, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1980, and 1982), won 65 games, drew 34, and lost
only two games (81.2 percent). This percentage makes him the player with the best score among
those participating in at least four Olympiads. Individually, Tal won seven Olympiad board medals,
including five gold (1958, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1974), and two silver (1960, 1982).
[13]

Tal also represented the Soviet Union at six European Team Championships (1957, 1961, 1970,
1973, 1977, 1980), winning team gold medals each time, and three board gold medals (1957, 1970,
and 1977). He scored 14 wins, 20 draws, and three losses, for 64.9 percent.
[13]
Tal played board nine
for the USSR in the first match against the Rest of the World team at Belgrade 1970, scoring 2 out of
4. He was on board seven for the USSR in the second match against the Rest of the World team at
London 1984, scoring 2 out of 3. The USSR won both team matches. He was an Honoured Master
of Sport.
[19]

From 1950 (when he won the Latvian junior championship) to 1991, Tal won or tied for first in 68
tournaments (see table below). During his 41-year career he played about 2,700 tournament or
match games, winning over 65% of them.
Tournament and match wins (or equal first)[edit]
195066[edit]
Year Tournament / Championship Match / Team competition
1950
Riga Latvia Junior championship
[citation needed]
,
1st
1953
Riga 10th Latvian championship, 1st
(14/19)
1955
Riga 23rd Soviet Championship Semifinal,
1st (12/18)
1956

Uppsala World students team championship, board
3 (6/7)
1957 Moscow 24th URS-ch, 1st (14/21)
Reykjavk Wch-team students, board 1 (8/10)
Baden/Vienna European Team Championship,
board 4, 1st2nd (3/5)
1958
Riga 25th URS-ch, 1st (12/19)
Portoro Interzonal, 1st (13/20)
Varna- Wch-team students, board 1 (8/10)
Munich 1958 Olympiad, board 5 (13/15)
1959
Riga Latvian Olympiad, 1st (7/7)
Zrich tournament, 1st (11/15)
BledZagrebBelgrade Candidates
tournament, 1st (20/28)

1960

Hamburg Match FR Germany vs USSR, 1st
(7/8)
Moscow Match for the World title with Mikhail
Botvinnik: (+6 2 =13)
1960/61 Stockholm tournament, 1st (9/11)

1961 Bled tournament, 1st (14/19)

1962

Varna 1962 Olympiad, board 6 (10/13)
1963 Miskolc tournament, 1st (12/15)

1963/64 Hastings Premier tournament, 1st (7/9)

1964
Reykjavk tournament, 1st (12/13)
Amsterdam Interzonal, 1st4th (17/23)
Kislovodsk tournament, 1st (7/10)

1965 Riga, Latvian championship, 1st (10/13)
Match with Lajos Portisch: (+4 1 =3)
Match with Bent Larsen: (+3 2 =5)
1966
Sarajevo tournament, 1st2nd (11/15)
Palma de Mallorca tournament, 1st (12/15)
Havana 1966 Olympiad, board 3 (12/13)
196779[edit]
Year Tournament / Championship Match / Team competition
1967 Kharkov 35th URS-ch, = 1st (12/15)

1968 Gori tournament, 1st (7/10)
Belgrade, Match with Svetozar Gligori: (+3 1
=5)
1969/70
Tbilisi, Goglidze memorial tournament, 1st2nd
(10/15)
1970
Poti Georgian Open championship (hors
concours), 1st (11/14)
Sochi Grandmasters vs Young Masters, 1st
(10/14)
Kapfenberg, European Team Championship,
board 6 (5/6)
1971 Tallinn tournament, 1st2nd (11/15)

1972
Sukhumi tournament, 1st (11/15)
Baku 40th URS-ch, 1st (15/21)
Skopje 1972 Olympiad, board 4 (14/16)
1973
Wijk aan Zee tournament, 1st (10/15)
Tallinn tournament, 1st (12/15)
Sochi Mikhail Chigorin memorial, 1st (11/15)
Dubna tournament, 1st2nd (10/15)

1973/74 Hastings tournament, 1st4th (10/15)

1974
Lublin tournament, 1st (12/15)
Halle tournament, 1st (11/15)
Novi Sad tournament, 1st (11/15)
Nice 1974 Olympiad, board 5 (11/15)
Moscow, USSR Club Team Championship,
Leningrad 42nd URS-ch, = 1st (9/15) board 1, 1st (6/9)
1977
Tallinn Keres memorial, 1st (11/17)
Leningrad 60th October Rev., 1st2nd (11/17)
Sochi Chigorin memorial, 1st (11/15)

1978 Tbilisi 46th URS-ch, 1st (11/17)

1979
Montreal tournament, 1st2nd (12/18)
Riga Interzonal, 1st (14/17)
198191[edit]
Year Tournament
1981
Tallinn Keres memorial, 1st
Mlaga tournament, 1st
Riga tournament, 1st (11/15)
Porz tournament, 1st
Lviv tournament, 1st2nd
1982
Moscow Alekhine memorial, 1st (9/13)
Erevan tournament, 1st (10/15)
Sochi Chigorin memorial, 1st (10/15)
Pforzheim tournament, 1st (9/11)
1983 Tallinn Keres memorial, 1st (10/15)
1984 Albena tournament, 1st2nd (7/11)
1985 Jrmala tournament, 1st (9/13)
1986
West Berlin open, 1st2nd (7/9)
Tbilisi Goglidze memorial, 1st2nd (9/13)
1987
Termas de Ro Hondo (Argentina), 1st (8/11)
Jrmala tournament, 1st4th (7/13)
1988
Chicago open, 1st6th (5/6)
2nd World blitz Championship at Saint John: 1st
1991 Buenos Aires Najdorf memorial, 1st3rd (8/13)
Score with some major grandmasters[edit]
Only official tournament or match games have been taken into account. '+' corresponds to Tal's
ws, '' o hs osses d '=' o drws.
Mikhail Botvinnik: +12 12 =20
David Bronstein: +8 5 =18
Viktor Korchnoi: +7 11 =5
Bent Larsen: +12 7 =18
Bobby Fischer: +4 2 =5
Paul Keres: +4 8 =20
Efim Geller: +6 6 =23
Lev Polugaevsky: +2 8 =25
Boris Spassky: +6 9 =25
Anatoly Karpov: +0 1 =19
Vasily Smyslov: +3 4 =21
Tigran Petrosian: +6 9 =27
Leonid Stein: +0 3 =15
Lajos Portisch: +9 5 =18
Health problems[edit]

Tal in 1961
Naturally artistic, witty and impulsive, Tal led a bohemian life of chess playing, heavy drinking and
chain smoking, which on more than one occasion created an embarrassment for the Soviet
authorities. His already fragile health suffered as a result, and he spent much time in hospital,
including an operation to remove a kidney in 1969.
[20]
He was also briefly addicted to morphine due to
intense pain.
[21]
On 28 June 1992,
[1]
Tal died in a Moscow hospital, officially of a haemorrhage in the
esophagus. But his friend and fellow Soviet grandmaster Genna Sosonko reported that "in reality, all
his organs had stopped functioning.
[22]
Tal had the congenital deformity of ectrodactyly in his right
hand (visible in some photographs). Despite this, he was a skilled piano player.
[23]

Playing style[edit]

Tal's gravestone, showing a death date of "1992 27 VI" (27 June 1992)
Tal loved the game in itself and considered that "Chess, first of all, is Art." He was known to play
numerous blitz games against unknown or relatively weak players purely for the joy of playing.
Known as "The Magician from Riga", Tal was the archetype of the attacking player, developing an
extremely powerful and imaginative style of play. His approach over the board was very pragmatic
in that respect, he is one of the heirs of ex-World Champion Emanuel Lasker. He
often sacrificed material in search of the initiative, which is defined by the ability to make threats to
which the opponent must respond. With such intuitive sacrifices, he created vast complications, and
many masters found it impossible to solve all the problems he created over the board, though
deeper post-game analysis found flaws in some of his conceptions. The famous sixth game of his
first world championship match with Botvinnik is typical in that regard: Tal sacrificed a knight with
little compensation but prevailed when the unsettled Botvinnik failed to find the correct response.
Although his playing style at first was scorned by ex-World Champion Vasily Smyslov as nothing
more than "tricks", Tal convincingly beat virtually every notable grandmaster with his trademark
aggression. Viktor Korchnoi and Paul Keres are two of the very few with a significant plus record
against him. It is also notable that he adopted a more sedate and positional style in his later years;
for many chess lovers, the apex of Tal's style corresponds with the period (approximately from 1971
to 1979) when he was able to integrate the solidity of classical chess with the imagination of his
youth.
[24]

Of the current top-level players, the Latvian-born Spaniard Alexei Shirov has been most often
compared to Tal. 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".
[25]
Tal contributed little to opening theory, despite a
deep knowledge of most systems, the Sicilian and the Ruy Lopez in particular. But his aggressive
use of the Modern Benoni, particularly in his early years, led to a complete re-evaluation of this
variation. A variation of theNimzo-Indian Defence bears his name.
Notable games[edit]
Mikhail Tal vs Alexander Tolush, USSR Championship, Moscow 1957, King's Indian Defence,
Saemisch Variation (E81), 10 In a critical last-round game, Tal spares no fireworks as he
scores the win which clinches his first Soviet title.
Boris Spassky vs Mikhail Tal, USSR Championship, Riga 1958, NimzoIndian Defence,
Saemisch Variation (E26), 01Spassky plays for a win to avoid a playoff for an Interzonal berth,
but Tal hangs on by his fingernails before turning the tables in a complex endgame; with the win,
he captures his second straight Soviet title.
Mikhail Tal vs Vasily Smyslov, Yugoslavia Candidates' Tournament 1959, CaroKann Defence
(B10), 10 A daring piece sacrifice to win a Brilliancy Prize game.
Robert James Fischer vs Mikhail Tal, Belgrade, Candidates' Tournament 1959, Sicilian Defence,
FischerSozin Variation (B87), 01 Their games from this time are full of interesting tactics.
Mikhail Botvinnik vs Mikhail Tal, World Championship Match, Moscow 1960, 6th game, King's
Indian Defence, Fianchetto Variation, Classical Main line (E69), 01 An excellent sample of Tal's
style from the first BotvinnikTal match. Tal sacrifices a knight for the attack and Botvinnik is not
able to find a good defence in the given time; his 25th move is a mistake spoiling the game for
him.
Istvan Bilek vs Mikhail Tal, Moscow 1967, King's Indian Attack, Spassky Variation (A05), 01 A
risky counterattack is crowned with success, winning the Brilliancy Prize.
Boris Spassky vs Mikhail Tal, Tallinn tt 1973, NimzoIndian Defence, Leningrad Variation (E30),
01 A game fuelled with tactics from its first moves. Black attacks in the centre and then starts a
king chase.
Mikhail Tal vs Tigran Petrosian, Moscow 1974, Pirc Defence (B08), 10 Tal destroys perhaps
the greatest defensive player of all time in a miniature.
Writings[edit]
Tal was a prolific and highly respected chess writer, serving as editor of the Latvian chess
magazine ahs ("Chess") from 1960 to 1970. He also wrote four books: one on his 1960 World
Championship with Botvinnik, his autobiography The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, Attack with
Mikhail Tal coauthored by Iakov Damsky, and Tal's Winning Chess Combinationscoauthored by
Viktor Khenkin. His books are renowned for the detailed narrative of his thinking during the games.
American Grandmaster Andrew Soltis reviewed his book on the world championship match as
"simply the best book written about a world championship match by a contestant. That shouldn't be a
surprise because Tal was the finest writer to become world champion". New Zealand
Grandmaster Murray Chandler wrote in the introduction to the 1997 reissued algebraic edition ofThe
Life and Games of Mikhail Tal that the book was possibly the best chess book ever written.
One amusing anecdote frequently quoted from Tal's autobiography takes the form of a hypothetical
conversation between Tal and a journalist (actually co-author Yakov Damsky). It offers a modest,
self-deprecating view of his reputation for unerring calculation at the board:
Journalist: It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly,
but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a
game?
Tal: Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We
reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not
obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work
through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would
transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would
naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all
sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you
cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.
And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korey Io
Chukovsky: "Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".
[26]

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the
spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian
education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the
marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope
ladder.
After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just
let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had
come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I
somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was,
by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from
making it.
And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking
over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.
Mikhail Tal, The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal.