Cute Little Beasts. Part Three.
Today we'll take a look at the games of a very young Tal. Despite the fact that there are so many books and articles written about "The Magician from Riga", his life is still the stuff of legends. Many sources contradict each other. For example, Wikipedia says: "At the age of eight, Tal learned to play chess while watching his father, a doctor." Meanwhile an excellent book "Complete games of Mikhail Tal" by Hilary Thomas states: "He learned the moves around the age of seven by watching games played in the waiting room of his father - a medical doctor." Then, according to Wikipedia "shortly thereafter he joined the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers chess club." But according to the book, Tal joined the chess club only three years later at the age of 10. Unfortunately we don't have any games Tal played during that period. But again there are different opinions about those games. According to Wikipedia "his play was not exceptional at first but he worked hard to improve." But I clearly remember that I read in an old Soviet chess magazine an article where the author remembered that in one of the National Junior Team Championships he saw a very young kid who was down a lot of material in every single game (and consequently lost almost all of them) trying to checkmate his opponent's King. And that's how he remembered young Tal.
Anyway, let me show you the first of Tal's game that was published in a chess magazine. Tal was 13 years old at that point.
(Just like in most of my articles I give you a chance to test your attacking skills, so the games are given as a Quiz. Please remember that you can always replay the whole game from the first move if you click "Solution" and then "Move list".)
