Tahl - by Lilienthal

     There probably is no country in the world today, where the successes of Mikhail Tahl, the Soviet grandmaster, are not commented upon.
     The year 1960 has arrived and in early spring — in March — Mikhail Tahl will begin his match with Mikhail Botvinnik for the world chess championship. He has won this right of honor at the claimants' tourna-ment in Yugoslavia. Mikhail Tahl is not only a strong chess player, but a witty person as well. I re-member how in early November the journalists were hurrying to see Tahl, to speak with him and to get an interview at the Vnukovo Airport near Moscow, where the plane with the chess players had landed. There was Tahl, surrounded by numerous reporters, standing in the center of the airport building and parrying the questions put in succession by curious journalists. One of them asked the grandmaster who had helped him to become such a high-class chess player. "The main thing was that nobody ever hindered me in playing chess," Mikhail Tahl answered. That was true enough.
     Mikhail was brought up in Soviet Latvia and had, just like all those of his age, all opportunities to display his talents. That is why there is nothing extraordinary and uncommon in his biography. Just like everybody else, he went to school. In his free time, he mostly played chess. The boy joined the chess section of the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers. The sharp, piercing, truly eagle-like look at the chess-board, that was characteristic of the boy Mikhail, has remained a distinguishing feature of the grandmaster to this day. Today, Tahl is a slender, medium sized man with a shock of black hair. He was born in a doctor's family. His father did not live to see his son's major successes, but his mother is proud of her boy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Mikhail Tahl is one of the most striking figures in the history of chess. Having for a number of years studied chess techniques under his trainer, Alexander Koblentz, Tahl has just in recent years suddenly scored unprecedented achieve-ments in chess.
     Beginning with 1957, Tahl has come out victoriously from five out of six major chess tournaments. This alone is convincing proof of the fact that Botvinnik has found a worthy opponent. Mikhail Tahl has won popularity as a player of a special, sharply combinational style. From the very first moves, he strives towards stormy complications, sometimes choosing variants that another master of a calmer nature would deem to be too risky. Tahl's boldness is not only the result of his certainty of himself and of his ability to evaluate and understand quickly the most intricate variants. Tahl is supported in his experimenting by a purely creative approach to chess, which had always been a characteristic feature of the best representatives of the Soviet school of chess.
     A game of chess for Tahl is not a means to gain another point in a tournament; it is a field for displaying his gifts, his creative individuality. Tahl possesses the exceptional ability to evoke a combinitional storm, even if it rages in a glass of water, as is said, in the calmest of positions. Immediately after his return from Yugoslavia, Tahl celebrated his twenty-third birthday. When the International Chess Tournament with the motto, "The Baltic Sea Must be a Sea of Peace," was recently conducted in Riga and Tahl was one of its participants, an important event took place in the young grandmaster's life. He married.
     Curiously, the "finish" of his courting was distinguished, as were many of his chess games, by an unforeseen development of events. The point was that he had been meeting with his future wife for a comparatively long time and, of course, was anxiously awaiting his wedding day. But he never suspected that it would be on that day. On a December morning, they were taking a walk about the city. They decided to go to the registry office to find out what formalities were needed for the marriage. They were cordially welcomed and told what documents they had to have. But here one of the registry office employees said that, since Tahl was such a popular chess player and the pride of all Latvia, they could settle all the formalities there and then, without any delay. On the same evening, Tahl played a tournament game with Boris Spassky, a Leningrad grandmaster of his own age. And, although Tahl lost the game, this day will remain for him the happiest day in his life. In any case, it will not be a "youngster," but a reliable family man, who will meet Botvinnik in March. Seriously speaking, the forthcoming match for the world chess championship evokes great interest in all countries. It will truly be a meeting of two giants in chess.

Andor (not Andrei as the original article claimed) Lilienthal was a Romantic at heart.