Greatest Chess Photos

Young Fischer.

Karpov

Ljubojevic - Karpov - Leko

(analysing in Wijk An Zee - 2008 - Photo : Fred Lucas)

Petrosian

i so love this thread, thank you all very very much for contributions. i was afraid it died the new additions are awsome!

@the_knife : in the group photo, your missing name is Hort I believe...

hicetnunc wrote:

In fact, this is Bessel Kok.

Great pics....

LOL, the picture was so big it didn't fit the screen for the article. LOL, but nevertheless, nice portrait.

if you put a beer in his hand and a cigarette in her hand, you could say he was hitting on  ann margaret at a bar scene.

The flying King in the Krush - Zatonskih 2008 US WCC match:

Amazing thread !!!

Henrique Mecking (aka "Mequinho") is the greatest brazilian chess player ever. His achievements include being the Brazilian national champion at 13 and becoming the then youngest IM in chess history at 15. He became a serious contender for the world title in the late 1970's and was at a point ranked third in the world, tied with Spassky and behind the likes of Karpov and Korchnoi.

Unfortunately, in 1979, towards the zenith of his career, he contracted a serious disease that apparently is yet to be correctly diagnosed. He was about 27 years old then and was impaired throughout the 80's, exactly at the period he should be on his peak performance. He came back to chess in the 90's but, while still a strong 2500 GM to this day, he was not able to get back to the top tier of super GMs.

Botvinnik-Mecking / Hastings, 1966

Korchnoi-Mecking / Augusta,1974

Mecking-Spassky / Manila, 1976

Obrigado magalhaes, não sabia.

Interessante.

This was the famous Tal Stare which is said to teriffy his opponents.

Here we see a much younger Tal Against the World champion Botvinnik

Tal won that championship match to become the youngest world champion at 23.

(Later Kasparov overtook this record, when he was 22)

Mikhail Tal

At different periods of time

See how he begins to looks older as each years pass by.

An younger Mikhail Tal

At different periods of time

Mikhail Tal

At different periods of time

Look at the transformation he had

He was only 51 at this time, but he looked a lot older.

Poor Tal was plagued with illness, throughout his life.He suffered from constant kdney failures and he had his kidney removed.

Tal was of course a chain smoker & a drank heavily

I think besides reading chess books, practicing chess, etc., I will practice Tal's stare. Lots of luck to me.  I doubt anyone could acquire such a devastating stare. 

Aging is not kind to most people.  Looking at the photos of Bobby Fischer makes me only want to remember him when he was in his prime.