Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Tal (9 November 193628 June 1992) was a Soviet Latvian chess grandmaster and the eighth World Chess Champion. He is considered a creative genius and is widely regarded as one of the most influential players in chess history. Tal played in an attacking and combinatorial style. His play was known for improvisation and unpredictability. Vladislav Zubok said of him, "Every game for him was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem".

His nickname was "Misha", a diminutive for Mikhail, and he earned the nickname "The Magician from Riga". Both The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games

Tal died on 28 June 1992 in Moscow, Russia. The Mikhail Tal Memorial chess tournament was held in Moscow annually between 2006 and 2014, with two more tournaments in 2016 and 2018.

Early years Tal was born in Riga, Latvia, into a Jewish family. According to his friend Gennadi Sosonko, his true father was a family friend identified only as "Uncle Robert"; however, this was vehemently denied by Tal's third wife Angelina. Uncle Robert had been a taxi driver in Paris in the 1920s and had lost all his family in World War II. His mother, Ida Grigoryevna, was the eldest of four sisters; Tal frequently visited the Netherlands to see his aunt, Riva, and another of his aunts settled in the United States but visited Riga.

As a child, Tal joined the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers chess club. In 1949, he played Ratmir Kholmov, a young master who had recently competed in the Chigorin Memorial chess tournament in 1947, in a simultaneous exhibition. Tal used an imaginative combination to win his game at the age of 13.

Soviet champion Tal made his first significant appearance at the 1956 USSR Chess Championship, sharing 5th–7th place with Lev Polugaevsky and Ratmir Kholmov. Grigory Levenfish called him "the most colourful figure of the championship" and a "great talent" who strove for "sharp and complicated play". However, he was criticised by the media for taking unnecessary risks and having restricted creative views. Tal then went to play on board three at the students' championship in Sweden, scoring 6 out of 7.

He became the youngest player to win the 1957 USSR Chess Championship, at the age of 20. He had not played in enough international tournaments to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, 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.

Tal made three appearances for the USSR at Student Olympiads in 1956–1958, winning three team gold medals and three board gold medals. He won nineteen games, drew eight, and lost none, for 85.2 percent.

He retained the title of champion at the 1958 USSR Chess Championship, and competed in the World Chess Championship 1960 for the first time. He won the 1958 Interzonal tournament at Portorož, then helped the Soviet Union to win the 13th Chess Olympiad, being its fourth consecutive victory in Munich.

World Champion

In 1959, Tal won a very strong tournament in Zurich, Switzerland. Following the Interzonal, the top players carried on to the Candidates' Tournament, Yugoslavia, 1959. Tal won with 20/28 points, ahead of Paul Keres with 18½, followed by Tigran Petrosian, Vasily Smyslov, Bobby Fischer, Svetozar Gligorić, Friðrik Ólafsson, and Pal Benko. Tal's victory was attributed to his dominance over the lower half of the field; whilst scoring only one win and three losses versus Keres, he won all four individual games against Fischer, and took 3½ points out of 4 from each of Gligorić, Olafsson, and Benko. When Benko arrived for his match with Tal, he wore dark glasses in order to avert the gaze of Tal, which could be intimidating. In response and as a joke, Tal wore large sunglasses which he borrowed from a member of the crowd. 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. 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 1957–58).

His highest Elo rating was 2705, achieved in 1980. According to Chessmetrics, a historical rating system that includes performances before the Elo system was adopted in 1970, Tal was world number one for 32 months, from October 1958 (after scoring 13½/15 at the 1958 Olympiad in Munich and 13½/20 at the 1958 Interzonal in Portoroz) through April 1961.

Later achievements

Soon after losing the rematch with Botvinnik, Tal won the 1961 Bled supertournament in SFR Yugoslavia, by one point over Fischer, despite losing their individual game, scoring 14½ from nineteen games (+11−1=7) with the world-class players Petrosian, Keres, Gligorić, 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 Curaçao, then part of Netherlands Antilles, he had serious health problems, having undergone a major operation shortly before the tournament, and had to withdraw three-quarters of the way through, scoring just seven points (+3−10=8) from 21 games. He tied for first place at the 1964 Amsterdam 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 in Sousse, Tunisia, he defeated Gligorić 5½-3½ in Belgrade in 1968, but then lost the semi-final match against Viktor Korchnoi in Moscow.

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 to Lev Polugaevsky, one of the players to hold a positive score against him. He also played in the 1985 Montpellier (France) Candidates' 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 were the two longest unbeaten streaks in competitive chess for more than four decades, which is defined as the ability to make threats to which the opponent must respond. Many masters found it difficult to refute Tal's ideas, looking at how many problems he created, though deeper post-game analysis found flaws in some of his calculations. Tal's style of play was so intimidating that James Eade listed Tal as one of the three players whom contemporaries were most afraid of playing against (the others being Capablanca and Fischer).

Although his playing style at first was scorned by ex-world champion Vasily Smyslov as nothing more than "tricks", Tal convincingly beat many notable grandmasters with his aggression. It is also notable that he adopted a more sedate and positional style in his later years.

In the modern day, Latvian 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 Vītoliņš, have played in a similar vein, causing some to speak of a "Latvian School of Chess".

Notable games Tal vs. Alexander Tolush, USSR Championship, Moscow 1957, King's Indian Defence, Sämisch Variation (E81). Boris Spassky vs. Tal, USSR Championship, Riga 1958, Nimzo-Indian Defence, Sämisch Variation (E26). Tal vs. Vasily Smyslov, Yugoslavia Candidates' Tournament 1959, Caro–Kann Defence (B10), 1–0. Robert James Fischer vs. Tal, Belgrade, Candidates' Tournament 1959, Sicilian Defence, Fischer–Sozin Attack (B87), 0–1. Mikhail Botvinnik vs. Tal, World Championship Match, Moscow 1960, 6th game, King's Indian Defence, Fianchetto Variation István Bilek vs. Tal, Moscow 1967, King's Indian Attack, Spassky Variation (A05), 0–1. Boris Spassky vs. Tal, Tallinn tt 1973, Nimzo-Indian Defence, Leningrad Variation (E30), 0–1. Tal vs. Tigran Petrosian, 8th Soviet Team Cup, Moscow 1974, rd 5, Pirc Defence, Classical System, (B08), 1–0. Tal vs. Joel Lautier, Barcelona 1992.

Various scores with major grandmasters Only official tournament or match games have been taken into account. '+' corresponds to Tal's wins, '−' to his losses and '=' to draws. Winning records in bold.

Mikhail Botvinnik: +12−12=20 David Bronstein: +12−8=19 Bobby Fischer: +4−2=5 Efim Geller: +6−6=23 Anatoly Karpov: +0−1=19 Garry Kasparov: +1−2=9 Paul Keres: +4−8=20 Viktor Korchnoi: +4−13=27 Bent Larsen: +12−7=18 Tigran Petrosian: +4−5=35 Lev Polugaevsky: +2−8=22 Lajos Portisch: +9−5=18 Vasily Smyslov: +3−4=21 Boris Spassky: +6−9=27 Leonid Stein: +0−3=15 Miguel Najdorf: +3−1=5 Pal Benko: +8−1=3 Wolfgang Uhlmann: +4−0=3 Borislav Ivkov: +3−1=11 Svetozar Gligoric: +10−2=22

Tournament and match wins (or equal first)

1950–1965

1966–1977

1978–1991

Book titles