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Original Title:	В огонь атаки
ISBN:	1857442024 (ISBN13: 9781857442021)
Edition Language:	English

The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Tal

Paperback | Pages: 496 pages

Rating: 4.53 | 485 Users | 26 Reviews

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Title	:	The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
Author	:	Mikhail Tal
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 496 pages
Published	:	July 1st 1997 by Everyman Chess (first published 1978)
Categories	:	Games. Chess. Nonfiction. Biography

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I can't believe that I left home some time without this book. It's worth more than five stars.


The stories are the best. ‘Why did you play this move when it was so clearly refuted in…’ ‘Well, I was reading the latest 64 in the bath, got to this variation at the bottom of the page and thought, yes, that will do, I’ll play that today. Jumped up, grabbed a towel and…I never did turn the page.’ Or the famous hippopotamus story:

Journalist: It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?

Tal: Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity. And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanovic Chukovsky:

"Oh, what a difficult job it was. To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus".

I don't know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh ? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder. After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: "Well, just let it drown!" And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

Journalist: : "And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately-calculated piece sacrifice ...".

All the things he did for fun, like leave his shoes outside his hotel door to look like he was inside, doubtlessly working hard, preparing and then sneaking off to the beach. I love the idea that he has the evil eye when really all he did was care in a different way from others. As Kasparov said, discussing the matter of the return match against Botvinnik:

And, of course, Tal should have prepared differently for the return match. But if he prepared, he wouldn't be Tal. He lived differently, it was simpler to him than to us. From my conversations with Tal, I think he didn't consider the things obvious to us to be of any importance….He didn't even seek the truth in chess, he sought beauty. It was a concept completely different from most of ours.

Kasparov, in the same interview about Tal, recalled this:

GK: Speaking of Tal, I became a world champion on Tal's birthday, November 9th.

EK: On Tal's birthday?

GK: Yes. I remember than on November 8th, before the last game with Karpov, I got calls from my teacher Botvinnik and from Tal, with whom I was on friendly terms. Botvinnik gave me a speech. He was like, "You lead 12:11. No matter what happens, you have proved that this match should have been played". Very stern he was. Tal didn't say anything like that. He just reminded me, "Don't forget, young man, that tomorrow is my birthday".

In case you haven’t heard the sunglasses story, here it is from olimpbase:

Tal was so intimidating in those years that he made seasoned Grandmaster opponents shudder with fear. A case in point is a game played between GM Tal (as Black) and Hungarian GM Pal Benko (as White) at the Interzonal Tournament in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1959. This was the third cycle (the first two were played in Bled and Zagreb, respectively), and Benko was starting to think that Tal had been hypnotizing him due to his poor record against him so far. So Benko took with him sunglasses and wore them while at the chessboard. But Tal, who had heard of Benko's plan to wear sunglasses before the game started, borrowed enormous dark glasses from GM Petrosian. When Tal put on these ridiculously enormous glasses, not only did the spectators laugh, but other participants in the tournament did, as did the tournament controllers, and finally even Benko himself laughed. But unlike Tal, Benko did not remove his glasses until the 20th move when his position was hopeless.

I’m writing this today because last night I watched Tal in a movie. Really. I watched The Falcon and the Snowman and discovered - it hadn't dawned on me before - that my favourite chess player:



is the spitting image of my favourite actor:



Are they not identical?

Karpov mades an appearance as a KGB agent. He plays no chess but he does make a 7 letter word, ‘diagram’, in a Scrabble game. It is so apt for a chess player, surely it was on purpose.

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Ratings: 4.53 From 485 Users | 26 Reviews

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What else is there to say? Talks game described and annotated by the master himself! Best part is his reflections on the psychological warfare going on in these games, which is an extremely rare insight into the thought process of a master at the peak of his powers.

I don't think that there was ever a more exciting chess player than Mikail Tal. His games were a maelstrom of creativity that would explode with sound (and unsound!) sacrifices that unnerved many of his opponents. And who could forget "The Gaze"! Some of the most interesting games ever played are contained in this volume, along with some great stories by Tal himself.

One of my all-time favorite reads. You really feel like you've streamed through living life. Even for a non-chess player, this book is a riveting tale and of course a classic.

I can't believe that I left home some time without this book. It's worth more than five stars. The stories are the best. Why did you play this move when it was so clearly refuted in Well, I was reading the latest 64 in the bath, got to this variation at the bottom of the page and thought, yes, that will do, Ill play that today. Jumped up, grabbed a towel andI never did turn the page. Or the famous hippopotamus story: Journalist: It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and

One of the best books I've ever read in Chess . I rarely give 5 stars , but this one deserves more than 5 . It's absolutely a masterpiece.

One of the best chess books every written. Former World Chess Champion Mikhail N. Tal takes on the role of both interviewer and interviewee in this unique autobiographical work. The book includes both annotated and unannotated chess games from both the high and low points of Tal's career.