Eighth Champion- Mikhail Tal
Reign: 1960-1961
The story goes that in 1948 and soon after he won the title the sixth world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik went on vacation to Riga, Latvia. At one point during his stay an 11 year old boy knocked on his door and asked his wife if the new champion could play with him. She sent him away saying she wanted her husband to take a break from chess.
Twelve years later that same boy sat across from that very same aged champion ready to try and take away his title. Upon winning it the 23 year old became the youngest world chess champion in history to that point in time and so the legend of Mikhail “The Magician from Riga” Tal was born.
Tal was always a fan favorite and his attacking, and sacrificial style breathed new life into a game perhaps long thought to be more positional and dare it be said technical and boring. Tal stared his opponent’s down and advanced, and sacrificed when others would have looked away, maneuvered, or retreated.
Until Ding Liren’s 100 game unbeaten streak in 2017- 2018, Tal had the longest streak of 95 unbeaten games (Tal’s win % was closer to half in that streak while Liren’s was a little more than a quarter).
While unquestionably a legendary player, and full disclosure one of my three favorites of all time, Tal’s issues away from the board are what may have objectively hindered him. His health was a constant source of trouble and what exacerbated it were his penchant for smoking and drinking.
Despite this fans clamored to see him and that hypnotic fanatical stare of old. In a video I did with GM Sergei Kudrin (here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOHKHv8aVY) he talks about his “GM draw” with the former champion. Tal had offered a draw in a boring equal position, but Kudrin, wanting to play on against his childhood idol, declined. According to Kudrin this lit a fire in the champion’s eyes and he stood up and began pacing back and forth, and after Kudrin went for and seemingly gained a material advantage Tal sacked both rooks to force repetition, which resulted in a standing ovation from the spectators!
My favorite bittersweet story about the champion is the one which occurred one month before his death. Already in the hospital and very sick, Tal escaped to play in a blitz tournament which included then champion Garry Kasparov, as well as GM Evgeny Bareev. In a video about that event Kasparov claims the one game he lost to Tal summarized the “Magician’s” entire career in that Tal’s final great attack of his life and subsequent knight sacrifice which began it was unsound, and wrong, and Kasparov even figured out why, but simply could not deal with the complications over the board in the time allotted for the game.
When I asked GM Bareev about his games with Tal at that blitz tournament in 92 where Bareev finished second behind Kasparov, and ahead of Tal, he mentioned he didn’t remember the specifics just that “I wasn’t that great at blitz but I finished right behind Kasparov. As for Tal all I remember was I just barely got by with 1.5-0.5. Kasparov managed to lose one. Tal was on the way to hospital from there and never came out.”
Tal Died a month later. In the same video mentioned earlier Kasparov concludes that, “ it must have been some kind of higher chess truth in that even with his dying breath he could still
play the same sort of chess which brought him his immortal glory.”
