It is my birthday today! As a present to myself I wanted to look at my favorite chess player - Mikhail Tal.
Known for his creativity and attacking play - The Magician of Riga was the 8th World Champion from 1960-1961.
He is also known for his improvisation and unpredictability, sometimes that would backfire, but other times it led to brilliancies still talked about today.
He grew up in Soviet-Latvia and began playing chess at the age of 6
At the age of 13, he started working with Latvian Master Alexander Koblents.
Two years later, in 1951 he qualified for the Latvian Championship.
In 1953, at the age of 15, he won his first Latvian title.
In 1956, his first USSR Championship, he finished in a tie for 5th and was critisized for 'taking unnecessary risks and having restricted creative views'
The following year, he won the USSR Championship, the youngest to do so at the age of 20.
In his first Candidates tournament in 1959, he scored 1st with 20/28 including winning all 4 games against Bobby Fischer
When playing Paul Benko at that tournament, Benko wore dark glasses to avert Tal's gaze. In response, Tal borrowed large sunglasses from a member of the crowd to counter-intimidate.
At the age of 23, Tal defeated Mikhail Botvinnik in a World Championship match 12.5 - 8.5 becoming the youngest World Champion
Botvinnik then analyzed Tal's games and took back the title in 1961 averting Tal's tactical play opting instead for slower games or veering toward endgames
Around this point, his health started to impact his play, causing him to slump until his kidney was removed.
Once returning to chess, he came back strong with 86 consecutive games without a loss from 1972 to 1973, then a 95 game streak from 1973 to 1974
That record stood for almost 4 decades until Ding Liren broke it with 100 games in 2017-2018
Over the course of his career, he played in 21 Soviet Championships, winning 6 times,
he was a 5 time winner of the International Chess Tournament, and an 8-time Soviet Olympiad winning gold every time.
Tal had fragile health, was addicted to morphine, chain smoked, and drank heavily dying of a haemorrhage in 1992 at the age of 55.
Since 2006, the Tal Memorial has been held in his honor
He was slightly ahead of his time by sacrifying material for the initiative and creating problems for his opponents
He was feared to be played against because of the possibility of being on the wrong side of a soon-to-be-famous brilliancy
Some of my favorite quotes of his -
"Chess, first of all, is art"
"There are two types of sacrifices, good ones and mine"
"To play for a draw, at any rate with white, is to some degree a crime against chess"
"Later, I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent"
"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2 = 5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one"
In today's game, we are looking at a game from the Goglidze Memorial from 1969.
Mikhail Tal versus Alexey Suetin
Now, if we're ready, let's begin
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Bd3 Ne7 6.Nc3 Nbc6
7.Nb3 Ng6 8.O-O b5 9.Be3 d6 10.f4 Be7 11.Qh5 Bf6 12.Rad1 Bxc3
13.bxc3 Qc7 14.Rd2 Nce7 15.Nd4 Bd7 16.f5 exf5 17.exf5 Ne5
18.Ne6 Bxe6 19.fxe6 g6 20.Qxe5 dxe5 21.exf7+ 1-0
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1134883
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal
http://cassidynoble.com/