personally i like tal.
which mikail is better?

someone told me that tal would play great and make brillant sacrifices but only win 9 out of 10 because one of them was a mistake or overlooked.
botvinik would play a safe and boring game but win 10 out of 10. i still like tal

From 1960 - 1966 they played 44 games. Based on chessgames.com that's all they played. The score was 12 wins each & 20 draws. So they were exactly 50% against each other. Hope that settles it!

These are chessmetrics stats by Sonas calculated to reflect the absolute highest peak of anyones career. Also to the right are the averages over certain periods of time. Also, you inquired about their records against other opponents rather than against each other. Tal: 65.1%. Botvinnik: 68.3%. This is all math, no opinions or feelings involved.
Rank | 1-year peak[10] | 5-year peak[11] | 10-year peak[12] | 15-year peak[13] | 20-year peak[14] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Bobby Fischer, 2881 | Garry Kasparov, 2875 | Garry Kasparov, 2863 | Garry Kasparov, 2862 | Garry Kasparov, 2856 |
2 | Garry Kasparov, 2879 | Emanuel Lasker, 2854 | Emanuel Lasker, 2847 | Anatoly Karpov, 2820 | Anatoly Karpov, 2818 |
3 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2871 | José Capablanca, 2843 | Anatoly Karpov, 2821 | Emanuel Lasker, 2816 | Emanuel Lasker, 2809 |
4 | José Capablanca, 2866 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2843 | José Capablanca, 2813 | José Capablanca, 2798 | Alexander Alekhine, 2781 |
5 | Emanuel Lasker, 2863 | Bobby Fischer, 2841 | Bobby Fischer, 2810 | Alexander Alekhine, 2794 | Viktor Korchnoi, 2766 |
6 | Alexander Alekhine, 2851 | Anatoly Karpov, 2829 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2810 | Mikhail Botvinnik, 2789 | Vasily Smyslov, 2759 |

Who's Botvinnik? Never heard of the bum.
In that case, you are posting in the wrong forum. Here we talk about chess.
@ the OP: Apparently you have no idea about Botvinnik. Here is a boring game he has played:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botvinnik_versus_Capablanca

Tactics are boring, all you have to do is calculate. Understanding is admirable. I like Botvinnik better.
(Of course both players could do both of these.)

Chessmetrics is one step up from tea leaf reading.
I guess all math is tea leaf reading then.

we've already established in these forums that Tal and Morphy were great only because they played terrible opponents. Tal was a great gambler, that is all. He got good results by playing fast, so he got a lot of moves in, and by playing lots of moves he increased his chances of accidentaly hitting a good one. Botvinnik was great because he insisted that he play his opponents when they should have been in the hospital. He got hospital bed odds.
Clearly, neither of them was any good at all. The greatest Mikhail of them all is Mikhail Jackson. Plus he could dance too.
why you prefer the attack and brillant mikail tal or the less attacking botvinik