Mikhail Tal's dangerous style of play

Tal loved the game in itself and considered that "chess, first of all, is art." He was known to play numerous blitz games against unknown or relatively weak players purely for the joy of playing.

Tal was known as "The Magician from Riga", and his style of play was very aggressive and involved heavy calculation. His approach over the board was very pragmatic—in that respect, he is one of the heirs of ex-world champion Alexander Alekhine. He often sacrificed material in search of activity and initiative which is defined as the ability to make threats to which the opponent must respond. Many masters found it difficult to refute Tal's ideas, looking at how many problems he created, though deeper post-game analysis found flaws in some of his calculations. The famous sixth game of his first world championship match with Botvinnik is typical in that regard: Tal sacrificed a knight with little compensation but prevailed when the unsettled Botvinnik failed to find the correct response. Tal's style of play was so intimidating that James Eade listed Tal as one of the three players whom contemporaries were most afraid of playing against (the others being Capablanca and Fischer). However, while Capablanca and Fischer were feared because of their extreme technical skill, Tal was feared because of the possibility of being on the wrong side of a soon-to-be-famous brilliancy.Although Tal's sacrifices were formidable, his style of play was very risky, contributing to his negative record against them. These included Spassky, Petrosian, Polugaevsky, Korchnoi, Keres, Smyslov, and Stein. (Tal has a positive record against Fischer with his four wins from the 1959 candidates tournament, when Fischer was only 16 years old, but never beat Fischer again.)

Although his playing style at first was scorned by ex-world champion Vasily Smyslov as nothing more than "tricks", Tal convincingly beat many notable grandmasters with his trademark aggression. Prevailing against Tal's aggression required extraordinary ability. It is also notable that he adopted a more sedate and positional style in his later years; for many chess lovers, the apex of Tal's style corresponds with the period (approximately from 1971 to 1979) when he was able to integrate the solidity of classical chess with the imagination of his youth.

Of the current top-level players, the Latvian Alexei Shirov has been most often compared to Tal. In fact, he studied with Tal as a youth. Many other Latvian grandmasters and masters, for instance Alexander Shabalov and Alvis Vītoliņš, have played in a similar vein, causing some to speak of a "Latvian School of Chess".

Tal contributed little to opening theory, despite having a deep knowledge of most systems, the Sicilian and the Ruy Lopez in particular. There are a few openings named after him, however, such as the Tal Variation in the Caro-Kann and in the Sicilian Scheveningen. But his aggressive use of the Modern Benoni, particularly in his early years, led to a complete re-evaluation of this variation. A variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence also bears his name.