Mikhail Tal: The Magician from Riga's Sacrifices and 95-Game Streak

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Mikhail Tal was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1936 to a Jewish family and had ectrodactyly, leaving his right hand with three fingers, yet he became a skilled pianist. At 13, at the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers, he beat master Ratmir Kholmov in a simultaneous exhibition with an imaginative combination. Critics attacked his risky style after he tied for fifth at the 1956 USSR championship, but in 1957 he became the youngest USSR champion, and FIDE made him a grandmaster without the usual norms. He sacrificed pieces for initiative, creating positions too complex to calculate. At the 1959 Candidates Tournament in Yugoslavia he scored 20 of 28, beat Bobby Fischer in all four games, and in 1960 beat Mikhail Botvinnik to become world champion at 23.

Botvinnik studied him and won the 1961 rematch 13 to 8 by steering into slow positional endgames, while Tal played on through severe kidney pain, drinking, chain smoking and a brief morphine addiction. He had a kidney removed in 1969, adopted a calmer style, and went 95 games unbeaten from October 1973 to October 1974 with 46 wins and 49 draws, a record that stood until Ding Liren reached 100 in 2018. In 1979 he tied for first and went undefeated at Montreal, and in 1988, at 51, he won the World Blitz Championship ahead of Kasparov and Karpov. He died in Moscow on June 28, 1992, at 55.

• When Pal Benko wore dark glasses to avoid Tal's stare in 1959, Tal borrowed oversized sunglasses from a spectator.
• Friend Genna Sosonko claimed a family friend called Uncle Robert was Tal's real father; his widow Angelina denied it.
• Vasily Smyslov first dismissed Tal's sacrifices as tricks.
• Botvinnik would only agree to postpone the 1961 match if Moscow doctors certified Tal unfit, and Tal refused.
• A month before his death he left his hospital bed and beat Kasparov in a Moscow blitz event.