Garry Kasparov talks about Mikhail Tal and Soviet chess history

This is a translation of a one-hour radio feature about Mikhail Tal, aired on the radio "Echo Moskvy" on November 30th.

Mikhail Tal, the great Soviet chess player, wasn't a "classical" chess prodigy like Jose Raul Capablanca, who, as the legend says, learned to play at tender age, just watching the adults playing. The Riga schoolboy Misha Tal learned how to place and move the little wood figures soon after the war. In 1946, he was 10. Later than some of his peers. But when he learned to play, there was no doubt that he'd become a genius. Three years later, Tal would play for the Latvia youth team. At the age of 17 he would win the Latvian championship, and at 21, the USSR championship.

To say that chess were much popular in the Soviet Union then than in Russia now is to say nothing. Chess were something of a national sport. In most schools, there were chess circles. The world championship games were analyzed in newspapers and on TV. Millions of people were able to comprehend the style and beauty of leading chess players' games.

Mikhail Tal became so quickly popular and famous because he played completely different chess than most of the other Soviet grandmasters who more or less imitated their acknowledged leader, the world champion Mikhail Botvinnik who preferred quiet, calculating, rational if not somewhat boring playing style. Tal played "wrong" chess - entertaining, spectacular, dramatic, combinational. He was like the legendary American Paul Morphy, the unofficial world champion of the mid-19th century. And he was like Russian chess emigree Alexander Alekhine, the only chess world champion who died undefeated.

Tal would sacrifice minor and major pieces, creating positions so complicated that most of his partners couldn't calculate all the possible variants and choose the right one during the game. They got nervous, made mistakes and lost. Later, after the quiet analysis, especially in recent years when powerful chess computers became available, it was often proved that many Tal's combinations, with pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen sacrifices, were unsound and could have led him to defeat. But in the game, they brought Tal one win after another.

In 1960, before his 24th birthday, Tal met in a world championship match against Botvinnik, crushed him and became the then youngest world champion. It was his career peak. There were many more victories for him afterwards, but Tal didn't occupy the chess throne for long. Just a year later, in 1961, Tal was utterly destroyed by Botvinnik in the return match. Almost up to his death Tal remained in the chess ratings top 10. But he never managed to become first again.

His health, quite frail since his childhood, often failed him, as well as his habit of living at large. The charming, witty, highly educated, lady's man and a keen partygoer, Tal was very ill in his later years and died in 1992, just 56 years old.

Eugeny Kiselev: And now let me introduce today's guest. Here in the studio, across from me, the 13th world champion Garry Kasparov.

Garry Kasparov: Good day.

EK: Thank you for taking part in our program. The first question I'd like to ask, did you know Tal personally?

GK: Yes, indeed. I played against him.

EK: What's the score?

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