Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal (Latvian: Mihails Tāls, Russian: Михаил Нехемьевич Таль; Riga, Latvia, November 9, 1936-Moscow, Russia, June 28, 1992) was a Soviet-Latvian chess player and the eighth world chess champion.

Known as the Wizard of Riga or the Warlock of Riga, he stood out from a very young age for his great ability to create surprising and often highly tactical attacks and combinations. risky. He is considered by some "the best attacker in history". His peculiar style has made him one of the legendary players in chess history.

Biography

Tal was born into a Jewish family; His parents were his cousins, and from his birth he had two fewer fingers on his right hand, a defect that he used to hide by hiding it in his pocket and that only became visible when lighting one of his cigarettes; that did not stop him from playing the piano better than well, compositions by Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Chopin being among his favorites.

Tal learned the game in childhood, watching at the age of eight the games played by his father, a doctor, in the family room; but he only played his first game against a grandmaster at age 17 (in 1953); considering that just six years later he would be world champion, his progress was extraordinary. He took second place in the 1954 Latvian championship, along with the USSR master's title, after beating Belarusian champion Vladimir Saiguin. He had another success by triumphing in the semifinal of the USSR individual championship. Then in 1956, he was one point behind the winners of the USSR Championship, and in 1957, Tal was fifth ex aequo in the semifinal, some distance from the future world champion Tigrán Petrosian.. In 1958, he graduated in Russian literature with a thesis on satire in The Twelve Chairs.

Several victories helped him establish himself at the top: he won the Soviet Championship in 1958 (12½ out of 18), then the Portoroz interzonal championship the same year, and finally, by being crowned champion of the FIDE candidates' tournament held in Yugoslavia in 1959 (helped by 4 victories over the young Bobby Fischer), he obtained the right to dispute the world championship against Mikhail Botvinnik, who had held the title of world champion since [1948].

Even preceded by his victories (he had also taken first place in Zurich 1959 with 11½ of 15 ahead of Fischer, Gligoric and Keres, added to 13½ of 15 at the Leipzig 1960 Olympiad), it was a great surprise when, in 1960, at the age of 23, Tal defeated the positional and strategic Botvinnik in this match, becoming the youngest world champion of all time, a mark that stood until Kasparov won the world title at 22 in 1985.

Botvínnik won the revenge match at the beginning of 1961, where Mikhail Tal had to give in, apart from his health problems, also because of the Russian's strategy, who avoided the tactical game as best he could and chose a boring game rhythm of slow and heavy maneuvers that prevented Tal's brilliant piece sacrifices, resulting in a final score of 8-13 in favor of Botvínnik. Months later, Tal won the Bled tournament in front of Bobby Fischer, but his health forced him to withdraw from several tournaments, such as the one for the Curaçao candidates, since his open love for tobacco and alcohol seriously damaged his condition. physical.

Health continued to play tricks on Tal in the following years (his kidney problems were chronic, which gave him continuous and painful renal colic and eventually they took him to the grave, even removing a kidney), but even so, achieved excellent results. Among them are the streak of 83 games without being defeated in 1972-1973 (he won 5 consecutive tournaments in that period, including a Soviet championship) and the first place ex aequo with Anatoli Karpov in the & #34;Star Tournament" Montreal in 1979.

Monument of Mikhail Tal in Riga, Latvia.

Tal's participation was highly anticipated at the Leningrad Interzonal, but he sank with just 8½ points out of 17, behind the likes of Korchnoi and Kárpov. He was later the head of Karpov's analysts when he faced Korchnoi in 1978 for the world title in Baguio (Philippines). In 1973, he placed ninth in the USSR championship and the same thing happened in 1975, he failed to qualify for the 1976 tournament.

In the period 1978-1979, he won several tournaments, such as the USSR Championship (his last national title, in 1978) and the "Land of Men". Likewise, he won the 1979 Interzonal, but throughout the 1980 tournaments, he lost in the quarterfinals, defeated by Polugaievski by a score of 3-0. In 1988, he won the only blitz world championship ever organized, despite the fact that since the 1970s he had shown enormous talent for rapid chess, beating masters such as Korchnoi, Petrosian and Smyslov in this variant.

Tal hated technological gadgets, never wanted to learn to drive a car and preferred to avoid planes, cars and trains. Womanizer and infatuated, he married three times and was also excessively prone to liquor and tobacco, which sometimes limited his enormous chess talent. He faced serious health problems and underwent various analgesic treatments that caused him to become dependent on morphine, but Tal jokingly stated that he was not a morphine addict but " chigorinómano " & # 34; (referring to Chigorin, founder of the Russian school in the XIX century, as opposed to Steinitz, considered at the time the best player of the moment).

He considered chess more of an art than a science, and all his life he was passionate about attacking combinations, developing a bold but calculated style; including in 1991 he won the Najdorf Memorial Tournament in Buenos Aires and the following year he defeated Garri Kasparov in the Moscow blitz tournament, dying a month after said victory from a hemorrhage in the esophagus, at 55 years of age. He was buried in the Riga Jewish Cemetery.

Among the current players, the Spanish, also born in Latvia, Alexéi Shirov is probably the most influenced and inspired by Tal's style.

Tournament and match wins

Results with some great masters

Note: Only matches or tournament games are considered.