In memoriam: Mikhail Tal, 1936–1992
Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal was born in Riga, Latvia, on November 9, 1936. He
learnt to play chess by watching his father when he was eight, and soon became
a member of the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers chess club. When he was 12 he
received training from Alexander Koblencs, and his game improved rapidly. At
14 he qualified for the Latvian Championship and the next year he finished
ahead of his trainer. At 16 he won his first national title and was awarded
the title of candidate master.
In 1956, before his 20th birthday, Mikhail Tal had qualified for the USSR
Chess Championship, which he finished joint fifth. In the following year he
became the youngest player to win the championship. Even though he had not
fulfilled the grandmaster norms completely – he had not played enough
games against non-Soviet opponents – FIDE awarded him the title in that
year. Tal won the Soviet Championship again the following year, and won the
interzonal tournament for the world championship at Portoroz, and played for
the Soviet Union at the Chess Olympiad..
Tal vs Botvinnik in 1960
The Candidates Tournament of 1959 was held in Bled, Zagreb and Belgrad, and
was a quadruple round robin with eight players. Tal finished first with
20/28 points, ahead of Keres, Petrosian, Smyslov, Gligoric, Fischer, Olafsson
and Benko. He won all four games against the 16-year-old Bobby Fischer. In
1960 he went on to defeat world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, becoming the youngest
ever world champion (at 23). He held the title for just one year, and was defeated
in 1961 by Botvinnik in the return match.
In spite of failing health Tal continued to play successfully in a number
of Candidates Tournaments, losing in 1965 only in the final to Boris Spassky,
in 1968 in the semi-final to Viktor Korchnoi, and in 1980 in the quarter-final
to Lev Polugaevsky. He won the Soviet Championship four more times. In 1979
he finished equal first with Anatoly Karpov in the 1979 Montreal "Tournament
of Stars", and in 1988, at the age of 52, he won the famous World Championship
in Blitz in St John's, Canada, in a 32-player field that included Kasparov
and Karpov. The first prize was $50,000.
Mikhail Tal was known as "The Magician from Riga" for his incredible
tactical feats on the chessboard. He was the world's greatest attacking player,
often sacrificing material speculatively in search for the initiative, creating
threats to which his opponents found it almost impossible to respond. Tal managed
to conjure up complications in almost any position and was almost always able
to solve the ensuing problems better than his opponent. He played close to
3000 games during his career, winning more than 65 percent of them.
For decades Tal suffered from bad health and had to be hospitalized frequently
throughout his career. He was a chain smoker and a heavy drinker. On June 28
1992, Mikhail Tal died of kidney failure in a Moscow hospital.
On a personal note
I met Mikhail Tal a number of times. I believe the first time was in April
1987, at the super-GM tournament in Brussels, where he was playing together
with Kasparov, Karpov and Korchnoi, and finished sixth with 6.0/11 points.
He often came to the press room, and there, on one occassion, he spotted us
trying to solve a problem that GM Jim Plaskett had given us.
White to play and win
We had already spent a lot of time shuffling the pieces around on the board,
occasionally being helped by one of the super-GMs, but to no avail. Nobody
solved the problem that day. Except Misha Tal, who studied it unsuccessfully
for about ten minutes, then left the press room. An hour later he suddenly
popped in again and gave me the solution. Apparently he had worked out the
main idea during a walk in the park. The full story of this puzzle is to be
found here.
The most time I spent with Misha Tal was in 1988, when he played in the World
Blitz Championship in St John's, Canada. He won that event ahead of the best
players in the world and, I'm sure he would not be angry that I mention this,
in an inebriated state. In fact I had to help him to reach his table for one
of the rounds after he had imbibed a stiff quicky at the hotel bar. Some
years later when I chided him for reckless disregard of his health –
I had quit smoking and strongly advocated that he do the same – he smiled
broadly and said, "Ah, but is life worth living if you have to worry about
so many things?"
