About Sportsmanship

This is the epitome of sportsmanship from a player. It is also a reminder that even Kasparov is human and makes mistakes.

His first wife, actress and singer Salli Landau described Tal’s personality...

“Misha was so ill-equipped for living... When he travelled to a tournament, he couldn’t even pack his own suitcase...He didn’t even know how to turn on the gas for cooking. If I had a headache, and there happened to be no one home but him, he would fall into a panic: “how do I make a hot water bottle?” And when I got behind the wheel of a car, he would look at me as though I were a visitor from another planet. Of course, if he made some effort, he could have learned all this. But it was all boring to him. He just didn’t need to. A lot of people have said that if Tal had looked after his own health, if he hadn’t led such a dissolute life...and so forth. But with people like Tal, the idea of “if only” is just absurd. He wouldn’t have been Tal then.

I think he had the soul of an actor. There was a reason why he always loved appearing as master-of-ceremonies. He needed an audience. He couldn’t play without one-People inspired him.

I can’t imagine him without a cigarette in his mouth- he’d smoke five packs a day! He never needed a lighter- he’d finish one and light the next on from it. Most of his illnesses were inherited .  When it came time for us to marry, a doctor from the Riga Special Clinic, where Dr. Nehemiah Tal once worked, told me that I shouldn’t marry a man with that kind of health. He was always ill. And in the last years of his life, all his illnesses got worse. There were three whole years in which his temperature simple never went down. I have no idea how a man playing with a constant temperature of 38-39 degrees could become World Blitz Champion in 1988! And on May 28, 1992, at the Moscow blitz tournament, he became the only player to defeat Kasparov. I’m told he even left the hospital to play. The strongest chess player in the world still lost to a dying Tal.

He was an unusual man. I miss him terribly. Sometimes I think Misha flew in from another planet- just to play chess, and then fly home. He was asked once how he would categorize chess- is it a sport, or an art? He was simply exasperated: How can you call chess a sport? I don’t know much about it myself- but they did call Tal the Mozart of chess.

And he was a genial sort in real life, too. He was kind, cheerful, and never had a bad word to say about anyone.”

There's a video of him talking to a group of chess players, then he says something, and they ALL laugh! Really something to aspire to.

Tal is my second favorite player now!!

he's far and away my favourite.