Tal's longest undefeated streak didn't include any games against top ten players though. In that respect for example MVL having gone around 55 games undefeated at the moment against among others lots of top five ranked opponents is maybe not less impressive in itself.
Underrated and Overrated PlayerS
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Jul 20, 2016
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#23
Every Master Wanna Be claims to be underrated.
Every Master Wanna Be claims that masters are overrated.
Simple.
I don't think Tal is overrated. To concoct and pull off those tactical stunts against the world's very best is no mean feat. His victories deploy great underlying positional awareness and are by no stretch of the imagination coffee house swindles. Whether in his prime he would have beaten Fischer and Carlsen as they were/are in theirs is of course impossible to say but I'm quite sure he would have been quite capable of scaring the s*%t out of either one of them.
Efim Geller. Fischer thought very highly of him and his record against Fischer wasn't bad at all as I recall.
Agreed.
Tal actually DID beat Fischer 4-0 at one candidates tournament. I'm unaware of any other player who racked up so many successive wins against Fischer.
SocialPanda - you are correct. My mistake... his streaks did include draws, but no losses.