Play Like Tal or Morphy

Is there a way to learn, to play like Tal or Morphy?  Or, what's the best way to learn to play like Tal or Morphy?   (yes, I'm learning to play positional chess and strategically, but would like to throw in some Sac like moves that will win IF they don't make the perfect moves. . . lead them through the black forest with only one way out, and all that.) 

   Anything other than, get your pieces out, fully developed, THEN look for surprising sacrifices...often Morphy, I'm sure Tal too, would not wait, and attack super aggressively, knowing they'd probably make a mistake which could be capitalized on.

    Any hints or suggestions from 1800+ players appreciated.  

    (I know that one guy will pipe in, saying "forget it!  you must learn the solid positional ways first before ever even THINKING about this Tal/Morphy stuff.   Yeah, maybe, but. . . back to my question)  

At least I went the whole thread and didn't mention Bobby Fischer  ;-)

Play like The OrangutanKid.

Maybe someday, people will wish they could play like you

You need to learn to play the position.  

You play the moves the position calls for, not moves that you want to play to imitate someone.  

 Probably good advice.  Just trying to improve and be able to beat this one 1650 player in the county...he's super positional only...so I think a Morphy type player would drive him nuts.  If he sees a 'out of book' move or 'sacrifice', his blood pressure shoots up 30 points and doesn't know whether to jump or go blind. 

  Not trying to BE someone else, just trying to be a good 'sacrifice' player.  

  Are there any Morphy or Tal type players out there?  (I KNEW I would get responses from positional players)

Look. Just keep practicing and focus on tactics (and strategy as well) and be yourself. If you try to imitate someone you will only disappoint yourself and not reach your full potential due to you losing sight of the real goal. At your level you should practice tactics more to improve in attacking.

Judging by your games, and your rating, youre on the wrong path to improvement.  Follow the advice of the guy on your profile picture.  "Be like water"  Chess, martial arts, and life in general calls for flexibility, and the ability to adapt.  

Trying to play like Tal without the ability will get you a lot of unsound sacrifices leading to a lot of lost games.   You just cannot mimic something like that, either you have it or you don't.   This would like the one great GM that is the toughest act to follow.

That was what I always wanted to do when I first started playing chess. I would just tell you that Tal didn't always sac pieces and try to mate the king. When people go over his greatest games they often just pick ones where he does that and it gives a misleading impression of his play.

When I want to sac something in a long game I try to calculate a few moves deep in a wide variety of variations and see if I can get anything out of it. You need to improve your calculation to do that properly. Also, to be able to come up with different ideas for sacs you need to learn positional ideas. Sometimes you can sac a piece for 2 pawns if you see that it severely restricts your opponents pieces or if it gives you good control over important squares, etc. Lastly, you should play openings that allow for tactical play, as you are more likely to have opportunities to sacrifice pieces in those games. I even play the englund gambit as black just because I don't want my pieces restricted. The idea is to get an open game with more piece play and have faith in your tactical ability to outplay your opponent.

The chance to make a sharp, sacrificial attack comes when your pieces are well positioned.  So you are right to suspect that getting into that situation comes first.

Once you have a good position, perhaps there is even a simple line which gains a little material or creates a long term positional advantage, don't be in a rush to cash in.  Instead look for a way to increase the pressure, bring another piece to the attack, set up another pin, put your rook on the same rank as the enemy king or queen, whatever.

I recently played out a game against a markedly stronger opponent.  I took a pawn coming out of the opening at the cost of conceding the initiative.  For the next dozen moves my opponent conjured up threat after threat without ever carrying those threats out.  I managed to neutralize some of the threats and to engineer an exchange or two but when my opponent finally pulled the trigger there was no-where to go, every defensive move ran into a new problem.

And if increasing the pressure involves numbers of pieces getting themselves en pris remember what Tal said, "They can only be taken one at a time."

Shirov is the closest to Tals playing style. If you can afford to hire Shirov as your coach, trainer, you could learn to play like Tal or Shirov.

Thanks all.  I just got back from my first tournament.  Forget Tal and Morphy.  I need to work on tactics!   Lost 2 games because of them. 

   Who is Shirov, someone on the forum?

A GM from Latvia. He has a very tactical style, reminiscent of his Latvian colleague, Mikhail Tal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Shirov

Pics or it didn't happen. Let's see the games.

Post the games with analysis.  Dont worry about your analysis being right or wrong.  It helps others understand your thought process and ideas.

Not sure how to post a game...will try;  Nope, will do or not do.

I'm adapting.  'Water can crash' too. 

Go to the game and copy the PGN into memory as if to cut and paste it.  Click in the discussion on the brown chessboard icon.  Click the middle option and past the PGN.  If you have a hand-written over the board game, you can enter it manually instead, but this is tedious.

I posted it in the 'Playing in my First Tourney Tomorrow' thread, in General Discussion.   Moves 19 and 22 I played horribly.

On the other hand, I found something:  DVD on How to Play Like Tal by GM

Simon Williams   It looks good.