Master Game Showcase - Tal's Pair of Brilliancies!!
Grandmasters, past and present, have or had played many games that'll go down in history for years to come for future chess enthusiasts to come across and see what their playing style was like and how the game went. While some games will definitely be more impactful to the chess world, such as the battle between legend Garry Kasparov and IBM programmed chess engine Deep Blue was known as the time AI was catching up to human intelligence, and the well-known immortal game of Paul Morphy, where you may or may not know, sacrificed basically all of his pieces to checkmate his opponent.
Well, this blog is here to take you through one game played between two very strong grandmasters, them being Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky and Soviet-Latvian grandmaster Mikhail Tal, which they played a game in the Tallinn Tournament against each other in 1973. It'll cover all the critical moments in the game, as well as learning from the game and trying to go through their thought process.
Boris Spassky vs. Mikhail Tal, 1973, Tallinn Tournament
The day was March 10, 1973, and the Tallinn Tournament was underway in Tallinn, in what was then the Soviet Union, present day Estonia. It was one of the strongest show-ups ever in the tournament's history. It featured former challenger David Bronstein, Estonian native Paul Keres, and of course, Mikhail Tal, Boris Spassky, and many more.
To give an insight of what the Tallinn Tournament was like, this tournament saw Mikhail Tal play some of his best in his career, and was a contender to challenge then-World Champion Bobby Fischer.
The 13th round showcased Spassky vs. Tal, which featured a great game played between the two players, which included an interesting gambit, a few inaccuracies here and there, and by reading the title of the blog, you should know what the last highlight is. 
Game Breakdown
The game between the two grandmasters featured the Nimzo-Indian, which is regarded to be one of the best responses to 1.d4. Even though black will often give up the bishop pair, in return it gets a better pawn structure and more straightforward development as compensation. To add on, black will try to keep the position as closed as possible, while white will try to open up the position.
It went to a Leningrad Variation, which isn't very common in master games, according to Lichess's database, with only a mere 3% of it being played. The idea of the pin is to make the critical e4 square up for grabs once more because the knight can't easily jump into that square since the pin restricts it from doing so.
Fast forward a few moves later, this is where Tal probably takes Spassky into unfamiliar territory in the opening stage. Instead of plodding through the mainlines of the theory-heavy opening, Tal decides to play a sideline where it's been played only 11% of the time; the Averbakh Gambit.
After a minor piece trade on move 11, on the f6 square, you can say, the "neo-Benko", not really, had been fully accepted by Spassky playing 13.bxa6?
The computer thought that Spassky gave up the opportunity to try to target Tal's queenside with the open position on that side of the board, with the black's b-pawn being one of the engine's primary targets in the lines it has thought of. Here are some lines that I'll explain to the best of my ability.
Moving forward from that key moment, that once position that had little to no room for error, with both sides needing to play accurately, the tension in the position mostly fizzled out when the exchanges caused the position to open up.
The game proceeded to go into a game where the position would be in black's favour. The c-file seemed to be an interest of Spassky, trying to overwhelm Tal by potentially doubling rooks on the c-file. Instead, Tal went ahead to attack black's king.
From that position, Spassky proceeded to play Rc1, eyeing the rook on c6 in an attempt to trade pieces. Tal decided to block the threat and play Bc5, which I saw was to try to paralyze the rook on f1 to keep guard of the pawn of f2. Spassky countered that with Rc2, planning to double the rooks while guarding the f2 pawn. It didn't mean much after Qa4, attacking the rook, Qb3, and Qf4.
Then, another mistake is played by Spassky, in which he responded Tal's Qf4 move with 25.Qg3? When I saw this through the game review, it sort of got me thinking "Why was this a mistake?" Of course, I went through the position with the help of engine lines to determine why Spassky's offer of a queen trade wasn't a good move. It definitely seemed like that Spassky wanted to trade off one of Tal's strong attackers in order to attempt to neutralize Tal's attack, but Tal has the choice to not trade at all.
Maybe you can find a better move that would've been more beneficial for white...
From that point on, it seemed like that Tal was progressively getting a better position even though the imbalance is present in the game; Spassky has a rook while Tal has the two bishops. Because Tal's pieces coordinate quite well, especially the two bishops beaming down on white's king, possibly a sac in the air?, the position was in Tal's advantage.
Continuing the breakdown of the game, Spassky tried to create some counterplay, but black's pieces were simply working together in harmony.
And then the game had basically sealed its fate. There was one good move, in my opinion, that kept the initiative of the attack led by Tal, which was then followed by a beautiful sequence.
Immerse yourself into Tal's shows and see if you could find the spectacular sequence of moves.
And that, is how Tal managed to finish the 13th round game with a majestic win against Spassky. An attacking style like Tal's might not be matched at all, but his playing style has been compared to Alexei Shirov, which is rather interesting because he's also Latvian? Maybe it's a coincidence?
Conclusion
To wrap this blog up, Boris Spassky played a decent game, but Mikhail Tal showed no mercy when it came to his attacking style full if tactics, where he thrives because of his fascinating attacks he unleashes at his opponents.
There's still a lot to learn from this game in terms of how grandmasters logically create a gameplan in their mind, and learning from this can potentially make you a better chess player in general, and maybe take a thing or two from this blog and learn from it.
I hope you liked this style of blogging where I go through master games and analyze them thoroughly to try to give the audience an insight of the minds of two very strong grandmasters and the game they played. Also, let me know what game I should go through next!
For now though, it's the end of another post. Feel free to tell me any feedback, comments, questions, etc., I'll always try to improve my blog posts, step by step (maybe meme making tips lol). I'll try to post more blogs like this, I'm trying to eye for Top Blogger, time will tell. To end this off, I hope you all a great rest of your day!
-Ryan 
