Some People Say I Play Like Tal: Is this true?

Send me an unrated challenge in about 2 minutes

This...

I literally let players like that sacrifice themselves to death at me.

Magnus and I played a number of games. I lost most of them, but I feel he improved my play at the the 3 minute time control, which was severely lacking. We must have played as many as 7 games and game after game I was running after time at the critical moment. I'll let Magnus post his wins against me if he so chooses. I did, however, win one game. I felt that I could only do so because he had trained me to play at the 3 minute time control, which I am unused to playing at. So this is it. My sole win.

If you send me a request we can figure out up to 3 games, unrated... 

Same time control

Uh sure, I'm not so confident at that time control though. But ya, we can play a few games. But rather than 3, why not 6 or 7? It's a pretty fast time control.

Actually, I was the one down on time most of the time lol. Which is a bit paradoxical because I'm the one that plays 3 mins more frequently. In several of the games you achieved good positions, however you allowed too much counterplay towards the end and fell prey to some tactics. Overall you did well - hit me up next time if you wish to play more.

Just sent you the live request... I'll be on until around 6:00pm EST

I'll be there soon.

You could probably get up to 1600ish in a few weeks if you get a little more solid with your positional play... When the game slowed down you accepted exchange sacs that you probably should have avoided, but you played well... I was distracted after the first game and I literally blundered my way out of an attack, but you played a lot better than I expected from a 1400ish player.

Keep it up.

That psychic gift from the Moon God Iahweh can only be possessed by Tal. Having a psychic gift from one of the Elohi(the original seven "rays" of the "cosmic mind" often depicted as a blindingly powerful sun), means that you are one of a kind. You are basically their champion, if you receive this psychic gift. So for me to have "the gift" would mean that I am the reincarnation of Tal. A nice fantasy, I guess I'd like that to be true.

Here's some more games. My opponent, Ratedlowerthanyou, was apparantly distracted when he played the games he lost, saying at the end that he had to tend to his son. We only played three games so I will post all three, my first game is a loss. Seems like that's always the case.

Game 1: I don't know what to say here, I got to a promising and possibly won endgame position and ran out of time. Whoops, that's 3 0.

Game 2: I really should have lost this game. My opponent made a terrible blunder Ne8 instead of Nf5(Rg8 Nh6 threatening Philidor's Legacy mate whatever I do and I can't take cause I'll get mated anyway.).

So I somehow won that game. So the score is 1-1 we have thrown away one game each. For the last game...

My opponent played a poor opening and I just kind of walked over him. He resigned and started complaining about his young son making it hard for him to focus. I don't doubt that any of this happened. As he left, he told me that I wasn't very aggressive and that I needed to work on my tactics. I wonder if any of the previous games in this threat attest to that conclusion...

Ya, the first game was killer for me though dude. I had so little time after we traded the queens off that I didn't even see that I had a passed c pawn that you couldn't stop. Oh well.

I'm not sure you really understand how Tal played. Let me show you a not-so-famous Tal game.

Now let me show you a not-so-famous Bronstein.

Now here is one my games.

I just played what might be my best game ever, does it look like a Tal game?

His king was brave, but he lost in material.

The funny thing is if he doesn't decline my sacs he gets the exact same position but I'm down a bishop but with three passed pawns. I assume the position is drawn, but holding the draw will be difficult.

No 1600 plays like talking in my opinion.

If it makes you feel better I'm probably a lot closer to master strength but my rating hasn't caught up to me on this website and I haven't played over the board in years. Unless you're one of those people who think that rating literally endows you with any skill you might have.

I played a 1700 recently and he played the Maroczy bind. I think you'll agree this is not how a 1600 plays.

My most Tal game yet. I feel like my opponent played borderline perfectly.

This game makes me happy rewatching it.

That was nice! Just yesterday gregorycoats showed me a similar ending in a match Romeo&Julieta x Kasparov Chess Club. This is it:

https://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=167904646

He made it in 28 moves!

I don't understand this obsession with Tal making ridiculous sacrifices and opening up the position in crazy ways to sacrifice everything to get to the king. That's more like Adolf Andersson, and he wasn't very good (by todays standards). I want to be clear what I mean by that. Most people agree he was GM level or better, but analysts of his games have decided that he very much limited his growth by sticking to sacrificial attacking play and he had limited positional understanding comparing to those who came just a few years after him. If I remember, even during his life time, the romantic school of thought was getting beaten by the positional Steinitz school and Anderson never fully took advantage of that school, never really reaching his full potential. Tal on the other hand would be able to compete in a modern super GM tournament especially with some more practice and better health. 

Tal was a ridiculously good positional player that was excellent at playing the opening. He didn't achieve this by being very booked up (although he was extremely booked up, enough to be world champion) but rather by having a keen eye about how to get more development and activity than his opponent and knowing when it was appropriate to trade material for better piece activity. In the middle game, he would restrict his opponents immensely and force them to make a small concession which would result in a brilliant attacking combination in a seemingly boring position. He was called "the magician" because he would find amazing attacks out of seemingly thin air in very equal looking or at the very least solid/boring positions. Within a handful of moves his opponent's king would be getting checkmate and the opponent would have very little to go on in post game analysis because he made no major mistakes or blunders, just small positional concession that added up to bad piece placement and a poorly coordinated defense to a sacrificial attack. Tal joked that his attacks were unsound, but this is completely untrue. When held up to computer scrutiny, 90% of his sacrificial moves were the best moves and 90% of the remaining sacrifices were still good moves. Only a small percentage of Tal sacrifices actually gave up an advantage or were mistakes. Furthermore, of the remaining sacrifices that were mistakes, they were not at all speculative and only held up to ridiculously clever defense moves that ultimately were confirmed decades later by computers, not analysts in his time (although the analysts could find the move and theorize that it looked better than what his opponent played in the game). Often times when people say that a sacrifice is "Tal-like", the move is not the best move, a mistake even, and not very difficult to meet. Just an extremely optimistic sacrificial lashing out against the opponent's king. However, this understanding of Tal's sacrifices simply does not hold up to statistical computer scrutiny which shows him to be an extremely accurate attacking player who assessed positions precisely and made objectively good moves.

If you like to open up the position and play crazy attacking moves out of the opening to make your opponent feel uncomfortable, then the player you're looking for is Adolf Anderson, who liked openings like the king's gambit and the evan's gambit. The fact that you think your play style is like Tal makes me think you've never actually studied a Tal game nor have any memorized and you've just heard that he's supposed to be an "attacking" player and interpret that however you want.