Tal and I

I never thought it would come into my hands. But somehow - it did. Ok, now you're wondering what I'm talking about. The NM title? A diamond membership? An SR-71? 

All wrong. It was a book. To be exact, it was The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, one of my favorite chess books, which I still do not own. (I'm a penniless nerd .) So, last June, I ordered it at the local library, putting it on hold. Normally, I can get books within a week or two of putting them on hold. But this time was different: The only copy of Tal's book in the library system was lost! Horrors! Whatever would I do? I was wrathful for a few days, but soon forgot about it and moved on with my life.

Until suddenly, this week, it unexpectedly arrived (along with a book by Winston Churchill, entitled The Gathering Storm). I was ecstatic! Overjoyed! Delighted! I'm serious, I was. I really like this book, and had hoped to write about it for a blog someday. And, with Week 2 of BlogChamps beginning, a deus ex machina plot twist had given me exactly what I needed. So, in this blog, I'll be writing about one of Tal's games. First, I'll write about the circumstances under which it was played. Secondly, I'll write about the players. Third, you will see the game with my annotations, which I will produce without benefit of computer. Next, you will see the computer's annotations, just so you can make fun of me. And finally, you'll see Tal's notes on the game. With so much to cover, let us begin.

Part One: Setting the Stage

This game was played during a Candidates match (this used to be a thing, after 1962 until quite recently, the Candidates was a series of knockout matches). It was the quarterfinals, and the winner of this match would play either Larsen or Ivkov. I'll quote Tal at length here.

"The first match, with Portisch, began with a score of +2 -1 =2 in my favour, and to some extent set the tone for the whole match. As Black I equalised fairly quickly, and adjourned the game in a slightly favourable ending. According to the regulations, adjournments were to be played off after every two games, and so the second game began with a certain moral advantage on my side... Here Portisch surprised me: in the second game, for evidently the first time in his life, he chose the Caro-Kann Defence. To me, such a blatant copying of Botvinnik seemed somewhat guileless, and when in my turn I avoided the well-beaten path, Portisch found himself in an unfamiliar situation. He played inaccurately, I played sharply, and the reader can see for himself how it all turned out." 

I'll cease the quotation here. As you may already know, the section in bold refers to the game we will be examining today. A word about the rest of the match. Unsurprisingly, Tal did win the match, and defeated Larsen in a real nail-biter of a match, perhaps the most exciting Candidates match ever to be held.

Lajos Portisch was truly an incredible player. As I remembered when rereading one of @simaginfan's blogs, Portisch was one of the few to grab Tal's poisoned pawns - and survive. Here's the game in which he did so.

Thanks to @Simaginfan for the annotations. I've found that he always does a wondrous job with chess history, finding rare pictures and games. 

Portisch was an eight-time World Championship candidate, second best in the world as of 1981, and overall an amazing chessplayer. He is still living (as of April 2023), and it is to be hoped that he will have many more years of life.

Searching through the games of Portisch, I was particularly struck by this one against Kavalek in Wijk. I will not provide in-depth annotations to the game - perhaps that will come another time?

Now that you know the circumstances under which this game was played, here's the game, with my annotations. I actually annotated this before looking at anything else, just so I wouldn't be biased. Let's see how well it worked out.

As you probably know, I don't really like engines that much. So why am I using one in my blog? To show how bad they are? Yeah, that's actually right. I'm going to try to display how much better of a job a person can do than an engine. Let's see how the computer did.

Wow. Stockfish is so smart. Wow. Despite this, I was not actually that impressed. Did it find the best moves? Yes. Did it write beautiful English? No. Was it humorous? No. In my opinion, computers cannot out-annotate a GM.

Thanks to @simaginfan for the picture : )

Having seen two other sets of notes to the game, now you can see Tal's. Of course, he doesn't have that computer accuracy - after all, man was not made to be a machine. Yet I find that this actually makes me enjoy the game more, seeing what a human can do when they use their mind. Enjoy!